Russian Republics and more ... 00 Introduction

Collectors of stamps who might have seen them already, shiny stamps with views on landscapes, pop artists, politicians, ... even cartoons.
Those stamps look a bit suspicious and mention a name of an existing republic or (semi-) autonomous region within the Russian Federation.
Some have names in Cyrillic language, some in English, some even in two languages.

When looking up the names on the world map, the country or region does exists, and is not a tiny island somewhere in front of the Scottish coastline (as seen before), but does that means the stamps are real ?

In this first post, I will give an overview on all (current) entities within the Russian Federation, later on, I will tell more about some of those republics and regions.

In 1993 the current Constitution of Russia was adopted. At that time, 89 federal subjects were participating and recognised. By 2008 the number of federal subject had been decreased to (only) 83, because some areas merged. Each of those entities have a certain degree of independence and equal rights towards regional legislation and constitutions.

Map colors:
Blue = oblasts, green = republics, pale yellow = krais, orange = autonomous okrugs,
pink = federal cities, purple = autonomous oblasts, grey = not Russia.

To make it a bit easier, all subjects can be listed under one of the eight districts.

   Central Federal District

   Southern Federal District

   Northwestern Federal District

   Far Eastern Federal District

   Siberian Federal District

   Urals Federal District

   Volga Federal District

   North Caucasian Federal District

to be continued ...