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Text|Qian San
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North of the Altai Mountains in Xinjiang, there is such a nomadic people, who are naturally good at singing and dancing, have Asian faces, and have full Mongolian characteristics in clothing and dance.
However, this people does not speak Mongolian, but Russian; They also lived in the Republic of Mongolia, but the Republic of Tuva, which is now part of the Russian Federation.
At one time, it was a vassal state of China's feudal dynasty; After Mongolia's independence, it became a "disputed" territory sandwiched between China, the Soviet Union and Mongolia. However, the final ownership of the region was never settled between China and the Soviet Union, and later according to the "will" of the people of the Tuva Republic, they "voluntarily" merged into the former Soviet Union.
So much so that after the collapse of the USSR, it was also naturally on the side of Russia.
How are life in the Republic of Tuva under the Russian Federation? Let's start with the conclusion: it's not good.
According to the ranking of the economic situation of the domestic states and autonomous regions in the 2018 Russian survey, the GDP per capita of the Republic of Tuva is at the bottom of the list, only $3,380. The Republic of Tuva has also become one of the poorest regions in Asia.
So, did the Republic of Tuva, which voluntarily joined Soviet Russia at the beginning, but now is getting poorer and poorer, regret it?
To answer this question, we must start with the origin of the Republic of Tuva's relationship with China and Russia.
01
The Tuvans first entered human history during the Sui Dynasty in China. During the Sui and Tang dynasties, it was still called "Dubo", and later, as the Mongol iron horse swept through Eurasia, the name of the Tuvans also changed, and the Russians called the Tuvans "Wulianghai people".
The reason why they are called Tuvans today is also due to their self-deprecation.
"Tuva" means "the one who has been thrown out of the house" in their language, and there are also meanings such as "trick-or-treating". Since ancient times, this has been a "three-way" area of nomadic exile.
The Tuvans' connection with China dates back to the time of Tang Zhenguan.
In the 20th year of Zhenguan, the Tuvans came to Chang'an along the Silk Road to trade with the Tang. Later Mongolia included it as one of the "Three Urianghai", of which the Tuvan region was listed as the Tangnu Ulyanghai.
In the 16th century, Tsarist forces invaded Siberia and drove out the Mongols with muskets, and the Tangnu Ulyanghai Sea was a disputed place. When the Russians came here, they began to collect a large number of taxes and taxes, which led to several rebellions, after which Tangnu Ulyanghai decided to join the Dzungar tribe, and at the same time developed the first hatred with the Russians.
In the 19th year of Qianlong (1754), after the Qing army quelled the Dzungar rebellion, Tangnu Wulianghai was officially included in the jurisdiction of the Qing Dynasty. However, with the weakening of the Qing dynasty, Tangnu Wulianghai was once again invaded by the Russians.
In 1914, Tsar Nicholas II personally approved the report on the admission of the inhabitants of the Uryanghai region under Russian protection. This time, the Russians learned the lesson of the first coercive rule and switched to a relatively "soft" strategy.
The soft strategy adopts the classic "three-step" plan:
The first step was to be physically occupied by the Russian army and establish forts and other defensive facilities;
The second step is to promote the Orthodox Church to the residents of Tangnu Wulianghai and obtain national identity from the religious point of view;
The third step was to begin the slow colonization of the Wuyanghai region and allow the Russians to enter the area.
It can be said that from Tsarist Russia and even later the Soviet Union's territorial expansion, this strategy was basically followed.
But the plans of Tsarist Russia did not work well here.
Take the issue of religion, the Tuvans once believed in traditional shamanism, and after being included in the jurisdiction of the Qing Dynasty, they began to believe in Tibetan Buddhism, and the Tuvans with a religious foundation naturally rejected the Orthodox Church, so until today there are very few Tuvans who believe in the Orthodox Church.
In 1924, the "Republic of Ulyanghai" was established here, in 1926 it was renamed the "Republic of the Donnutuvans", and in 1944 it officially joined the Soviet Union and incorporated into the territory of the Soviet Union, and then in 1961 it was officially renamed the "Tuva Republic".
Judging from the several Russian invasions, they still have some obsession with Tuva, so where does this obsession come from?
Here we want to talk about the geographical and human environment of the Republic of Tuva.
First of all, in the 170,000-square-kilometer Republic of Tuva, the vast majority of the population is mainly livestock, and there are natural grasslands where livestock farming can flourish. The first reason why Soviet Russia looked at the Republic of Tuva was the animal husbandry here.
Especially during the Great Patriotic War in World War II, the Tuva region delivered a large amount of beef and mutton to the Soviet front, ensuring the supply of meat to the Soviet Union. Although the Soviet Union is vast, there are not many areas where animal husbandry can be developed, and most of the regions are located in Siberia, which is extremely cold, so the agricultural importance of the Tuva Republic is particularly prominent.
Secondly, the Republic of Tuva also has rich mineral resources, including coal, asbestos reserves, and various metal mineral reserves, which is a natural "mineral treasure land". After Stalin came to power, the entire Soviet Union began to devote itself to heavy industrial production, and the Republic of Tuva also became a supply area for Soviet raw materials, which was also extremely important in an industrial sense.
So, with such a rich land, why were the Tuvans willing to take the initiative to incorporate it into the Soviet Union?
Let's take a look at the "big pie" that the Soviet Union drew for the Tuvans.
02
At that time, the Soviet Union had a very strong industrial base and relatively developed technology in mineral smelting, which attracted Tuva very much.
Because the Tuvans were eager for industrialization, they were probably more anxious than any other country at the time.
There is an old saying among nomads called "the furry is not money", which means that a round of livestock raising requires a lot of money, but what worries herders is that if an epidemic breaks out, it will directly lead to a large-scale reduction in the production of the owner.
It can be seen that animal husbandry has strong instability, and the country relies on the single development of animal husbandry to easily produce periodic economic collapse.
The Tuva People's Republic is therefore eager to transform itself from a pastoral to an industrial country.
On this basis, the Soviet Union also handed over an olive branch to the Republic of Dawei, which means that if you join voluntarily, your industrialization will not have to worry. I produce raw materials, you produce technology, isn't it a win-win?
However, it turned out that the Tuvans were "fooled" after all.
Similar to many resource-exporting regions, after the Republic of Tuva joined the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union began to desperately mine mineral resources, and batch after batch of ore was sent to Eastern Europe, but returned with only a little money to support the family.
In addition, when he joined the Soviet Union in 1944, the Soviet Union was in the final stage of the Soviet-German war, so Stalin simply prevaricated the Tuvans on the grounds of the war, saying that your development will have to wait.
So what contribution did the Republic of Tuva make to the USSR?
During the Great Patriotic War, for example, during the entire Great Patriotic War, more than 8,000 Tuvans joined the Red Army and participated in the liberation of Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and other regions.
Animal husbandry in the Republic of Tuva was also the logistical support of the Red Army of the Soviet Union, supplying tens of thousands of livestock.
After the end of the Great Patriotic War, in preparation for the post-war rise of the Soviet Union, the Tuva Republic also donated 30,000 cows free of charge to help rebuild agriculture and animal husbandry in the Ukrainian region.
More importantly, gold mines in the Republic of Tuva were also "requisitioned" by the Soviet Union.
According to statistics, throughout the Great Patriotic War, the Republic of Tuva provided gold reserves equivalent to 35 million rubles to the territory of the USSR, which was still a lot of money at that time. However, the gold has not yet been returned to the Republic of Tuva.
After the end of World War II, the Soviet Union began to help the Republic of Tuva, such as sending Russian engineers and building streets and houses with very Russian characteristics, so that the Republic of Tuva has a bit of a modern city.
However, apart from building houses and buying and selling minerals, there really is nothing else.
By the time of Soviet revisionism, the Republic of Tuva, like Armenia and Azerbaijan, had become "outcasts" of Soviet revision, and industrial development could not turn them, and trade development still could not turn them.
In this regard, the Soviet Union is still a little "justified", saying that trade should pay attention to your dealings, even if they are all in the Soviet Union, can you give anything other than cattle, sheep and ore? If not, development will have to lean back.
The Republic of Tuva was dumbfounded.
But at the time, the Republic of Tuva was still fantasizing that once the Soviet Union won the Cold War, it would one day be developed. As everyone knows, there are many, many areas in front of you...
Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Republic of Tuva did not have its own number. At this time, it was already a situation of "it was easy to get on board and difficult to disembark", and in desperation, the Republic of Tuva could only continue to join the Russian Federation and wait for the development of the new era.
03
After 1991, Russia's situation is well known, with constant foreign wars and obvious domestic economic regressions, which can be described as both internal and external troubles. At this time, Russia, even if it has the heart, is really unable to care about the development of Tuva.
To this day, although the Republic of Tuva is part of the Russian Federation, the economic development of the region has always been unsatisfactory, and the economy has long been in the Russian region.
So why is the modern Republic of Tuva so difficult to develop?
The development of a region does not depend on resources alone, and cultural and economic factors need to be taken into account.
Culturally, it can be said that the degree of "Russification" of the Republic of Tuva is actually not very high.
On the religious issues we mentioned earlier, shamanism and lamaism are still the main religions in the Republic of Tuva to this day, and it has become a habit for local people to recite Buddhist scriptures, while Orthodox churches are very popular on Sundays.
Then there is the language problem, the local population is still accustomed to using Tuvan, which is a language family of the same origin as Uyghur, and two completely different systems from Russian, so it is extremely difficult to integrate.
The difficulty of integrating the language directly affected the local education problem, and there were very few Russian intellectuals and officials from the Tuva Republic, and even the exclusion of Russians here for a time.
For example, in April 2016, Russian residents living in the Republic of Tuva wrote to President Vladimir Putin saying that Russian education was woefully inadequate, that only one of the 17 district chiefs was Russian, that there were only three Russians in the government system, and that there was not a single Russian on the election commission.
But the letter did not attract Putin's excessive attention and was included in the list of "documents without non-substance."
In terms of medical standards, the Republic of Tuva ranks at the bottom of Russia in terms of medical beds per capita and doctors per capita, and until 2018, there were only more than 30 medical institutions in the entire country.
If you think that some parts of Central and Southeast Asia are poor, then this data is enough to prove that the Republic of Tuva is actually poorer, but it belongs to Russia and is usually not included in everyone's vision.
Let's talk about industry, at present, the industry of the Republic of Tuva is still mainly based on the exploitation of resources, of which the mining of cobalt, gold and asbestos has a certain scale. However, these industrial systems did not feed the entire population of the Republic of Tuva, and the vast majority of the inhabitants still depend on traditional animal husbandry.
04
There is no doubt that from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union to today's Russia, the Republic of Tuva has always been an ore exporter for Russians, and Russia has always played the role of "resource grabber", once promised common development, which is not seen much here.
In Kyzyl, the capital of the Republic of Tuva, only the city center can still see a few modern buildings, and there is still no trace of modernization in other areas, saying that it is the capital of a country, it is inevitable that some are too cold.
In the period of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, as a member of the Russian Federation, the Republic of Tuva undoubtedly sided with Russia, but although it nominally supported Russia's military operations, it could do little to help.
When Europe and the United States send modern weapons and equipment to Ukraine, the Tuva Republic can only donate 3,000 war horses to support Russia's logistics. Just looking at this news of donating war horses, I really don't know if the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is still a modern war.
If you ask, did the Republic of Tuva regret joining Soviet Russia in the first place? Maybe now the intestines are repentant.
Some people say that the geographical environment of the Republic of Tuva is doomed to the fact that it is backward in development, but the living conditions of the Tuvan people located in Xinjiang on the mainland can be contrasted with here, the state attaches importance to the development of the western region, the Tuvan people in Xinjiang are well fed and warmly dressed, the language and religion can be recognized, and the people's life is hopeful.
In all respects, it can be said that the Republic of Tuva is almost an era behind the world. They are greeted only by herding sheep and cattle day after day, only traditional hunting in the last era ....