I’ve started to answer your question a couple of times, but the vastness of it and my feeling like I lack the expertise needed made me erase these tries. I wasn’t that far into the Far East, mostly meddling around northern and eastern borders in the western half of the country, so I can’t tell much about two exact cases you are interested in. Only paint one big and generalized picture.
In very broad strokes, I can tell that big cities that I was in, the 300k+ populated capitals of the region, felt more like a twist on a theme: up to 50% of it’s own character but 50% or more of the same soviet heritage (e.g. architecture, behavior) plus contemporary russian stuff e.g. same store chains, street names, people consuming same social media content etc. Due to geographical and political unequality, some regions do show more of local spirit, either by being more isolated or by having a strong influence of e.g. Islam. But nevertheless, if you are traveling by train and have just an hour or two in each of them, you are unlikely to tell them apart after seeing four of them one after another in a close succession.
The salt of the earth predictably lays in smaller towns, villages, and the national culture of my non-russian half is better represented in these, with it’s own dialect, folk tales, customs and local paegan-alike festivals. These places are still there, and there are small and caustious steps towards conserving some of these at least as modern reenactments and museums (god forbid someone would cry separatist national self-consciousness or whatever), but small places are dying as people migrate to cities with working infrastructure, jobs and access to basic material goods. I hope they’d outlive the modern turmoil if only for the sake of counter-acting the unhealthy unifying trope of contemporary propaganda, and for people visiting this land in the future to enrich themselves with the same oddities locals were inspired by there many centuries ago.
Oh, well.
I’ve started to answer your question a couple of times, but the vastness of it and my feeling like I lack the expertise needed made me erase these tries. I wasn’t that far into the Far East, mostly meddling around northern and eastern borders in the western half of the country, so I can’t tell much about two exact cases you are interested in. Only paint one big and generalized picture.
In very broad strokes, I can tell that big cities that I was in, the 300k+ populated capitals of the region, felt more like a twist on a theme: up to 50% of it’s own character but 50% or more of the same soviet heritage (e.g. architecture, behavior) plus contemporary russian stuff e.g. same store chains, street names, people consuming same social media content etc. Due to geographical and political unequality, some regions do show more of local spirit, either by being more isolated or by having a strong influence of e.g. Islam. But nevertheless, if you are traveling by train and have just an hour or two in each of them, you are unlikely to tell them apart after seeing four of them one after another in a close succession.
The salt of the earth predictably lays in smaller towns, villages, and the national culture of my non-russian half is better represented in these, with it’s own dialect, folk tales, customs and local paegan-alike festivals. These places are still there, and there are small and caustious steps towards conserving some of these at least as modern reenactments and museums (god forbid someone would cry separatist national self-consciousness or whatever), but small places are dying as people migrate to cities with working infrastructure, jobs and access to basic material goods. I hope they’d outlive the modern turmoil if only for the sake of counter-acting the unhealthy unifying trope of contemporary propaganda, and for people visiting this land in the future to enrich themselves with the same oddities locals were inspired by there many centuries ago.