Just curious because I've read a little bit about modern Mongolia and Tuva, yet one thing that stuck out to me is Tuva's isolation. It seems fairly distinct from the rest of the Russian Federation so I'm curious as to whether there were any real independence movements in it. For specificity's sake I guess I'm asking about the 1989-1991 period of transition out of USSR.
Yes.
If you're not aware, just in case, I'll mention that Tuva was nominally independent from 1911 until 1944, when it was annexed into the Soviet Union. Before this, it had been long under the control of the Mongols, and then the Qing dynasty.
As the Soviet Union fell, Tuvan nationalism grew such that when the new Tuvan constitution was created, it included provisions for secession. Violence against ethnic Russians was also rampant ( http://articles.latimes.com/1990-11-13/news/wr-4530_1_russian-home/2)
Whether or not an active vote for seceding from Russia would've been accepted by the central government, I don't know, but in any case, this nationalist fervour had died down by the 90s.