ABSTRACT
The Soviet Union is a federation of fifteen national "union republics." In addition, within the union republics there are twenty national "autonomous republics" and eight autonomous regions. Legally, all union republics have equal status. But geopolitical reality makes the Russian Republic superior to the others. The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic is a federation of nations in itself, occupies the bulk of the Eurasian land mass of the USSR, and accounts for roughly half of the Soviet population. The five major non-Russian areas in the Soviet Union are all territorially connected to the RSFSR, but only in one case to each other.
