Talk:Far Eastern Federal District

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[edit] Re: merge with Russian Far East

Crossposted with User talk:Ran

I removed the merge notices from both the Far Eastern Federal District and Russian Far East articles (it was actully me who split them in two in the first place some time ago). Why it is true that both terms apply to the same territory, the first, however, is a unit of administrative division, and the second a historio-geographic term. Russian Far East will always stay the same, while the Federal District can be changed any day or abolished all together. The difference here is approximately the same as between the Kamchatka Peninsula and Kamchatka Oblast.

Please let me know if you have questions. Thanks.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 13:25, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

sorry, I hadn't seen this. I merged the articles anyway, fully realizing that the terms are not synonymous. It is not required that a term is synonymous for it to be a redirect, compare South Asia and Indian Subcontinent, and it is better to explain the subtle differences in a single article than to have two stubs covering essentially the same region. Still, I should have discussed first, had I seen that this had come up before, and I guess you are free to revert me. Baad 18:26, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah, just left you a message directing to the other talk page. Sorry. The main reasons why these two are separate are because Russian Far East is a permanent entity (well, while it's Russian, anyway), and the corresponding federal district can go away just as quick as it was introduced. The other reason is to maintain consistency of the navigation—federal districts have their own set of navboxes, and historical areas—another. It is merely a coincedence that the borders of RFE exactly match those of the federal district. None of the other historical regions of Russia matches the borders of the federal districts they belong to (if you are interested, you can read about it at Subdivisions of Russia). Anyway, I fully understand your reasoning. As it was rightfully noted before, the content of these two articles does not really explain the existing split. I've been going to work on this for, oh, almost two years now, which is, honestly, quite pathetic, considering that RFE was the topic I was going to work on in Wikipedia all along. Anyway, feel free to let me know if you have any questions.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 18:34, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I see see your point. I am working on Demographics of Siberia just now to get an overview, and I'd just like to know, which article is going to be just about the term, and which about the actual area (assuming that we want to evolve this into a full article about culture, demographics, ethnicities, wildlife, natural resources and what have you, and that we don't want to do it twice over, once for the 'traditional subdivision' and once for the Federal District) - what do you suggest? Baad 18:47, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, by term, do you mean Siberia or RFE? RFE is considered a part of Siberia in historical context, but from the geographic science point of view they are traditionally considered separate. If you can read Russian, there is more on that at ru:Сибирь, or see Talk:Siberia—I remember discussing this issue at length a while ago with a Russian editor.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 19:10, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

from what I gather, Sakha belongs to both Siberia and the RFE. So I suppose there could be "Sakha" sections on the Siberia, RFA and FEFD articles. I imagine that all these articles willbe 'overview' style, with details treated in main articles. My concern here is just that the RFE and the FEFD articles will treat the exact same region. There is no need to do an overview over the same region twice. Either RFE or FEFD will be an overview article, while the other will point out terminology only. We can start adding material to either of the two, I am just asking you which one you'd like to be about terminology (RFE vs. FEFD) and which will actually be about the area itself. 62.202.73.130 21:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps it would help to think of RFE as the main article, and treat the FEFD for what it is—a fairly artificial administrative subdivision. In this case, most of the information will be in Siberia/RFE articles, while the FEFD and SFD would contain (dreadfully boring) details about recent Russian domestic politics and maybe some current stats (which now tend to be tied to federal districts). Considering the material that you would like to contribute, I would guess that there is really no need to even touch the federal districts at this point. I figure that content is what matters the most; if we change our minds regarding where it goes, we can always do some moves later. Let me know if you have any other ideas.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 21:54, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Ok -- I note that according to Siberia, all of the RFE is "historically" considered part of Siberia. Now, if today, only Sakha is considered part of Siberia for some reason, this begs the question: Is there a term to refer to (FEFD minus Sakha), i.e. the 'non-Siberian' part of Asian Russia? Is, maybe, the term RFE sometimes (informally?) used to the exclusion of Sakha? That would make sense, since then "Russia = Europen parts + Siberia + RFA". I'm trying to come up with population figures for Demographics of Siberia, and for the moment I just give totals including and excludung the non-Sakha RFE. I am looking for percentages of ethnicities etc. for Siberia, but they do not seem to be available, and I'll have to sum them up from Oblast level. Baad 15:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

There is more on Siberia/RFE border issue in the Russian entry. The truth is, there is no set border, not even one in a controversial Europe/Asia border sense. When Siberia was settled by Russians, they gradually kept moving east, covering the Far Eastern portion. At first the RFE was covered as a part of the Siberian expansion (hence historical references to it being a part of Siberia), but then as the region developed economically, it started to be viewed independently of Siberia more often.

In general (but not always!) it is convenient to consider everything west of Sakha to be Siberia, and everything east of it—RFE, but again, this is by no means official. The population of the region is too few for anyone to really care. Sakha is grouped with Siberia or RFE depending on the purpose such grouping tries to achieve (again, in historical contexts Sakha tends to be grouped with Siberia, but geographically—with RFE). I am afraid neither me nor anyone else would be able to tell exactly what the "correct" grouping should be. I would suggest for the sake of convenience and Wikipedia purposes to consider Sakha a part of RFE (based on the fact that it is a part of the FEFD). This, while is not exactly right, is not wrong either. For demographics purposes, go with the federal districts grouping—modern Russian statistics is done that way.

Also, if you think defining Siberia vs. RFE was complicated, consider the western border of Siberia. That one is not set either, and, according to some conventions, can stretch as far as the Urals (effectively making Europe border Siberia). According to other conventions, Urals is a separate region (and, indeed, a separate federal district).

I sure hope all this mess is not making you desperate to stop contributing, though. Maybe it will be easier to resolve content organization once we actually have content to organize. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 15:52, 29 October 2005 (UTC)