Why did Russia fuck over itself by giving the RSFSR such small area under the Soviet Union?

And why would they? The Coюз нepyшимый was supposed to last forever, Communism will prevail in the end. They didn't realize the USSR might fall apart until way too late, and by that point Nationalist movements in the other republics were already getting quite influential in local politics. Seizing their land for Russia would have triggered an even stronger backlash, and cause the union to break up violently instead of relatively peacefully. NATO would have exploited the shit out of a civil war within the Soviet Union itself.

That map is misleading when it comes to Estonia. The depicted "russian" (Russia propaganda lumps all russian speaking people into "russians" regardless of their actual ethnicity or citizenship for infowar purposes) immigrant populations are heavily concentrated into a few urban areas. For the County of Harju the overwhelming majority reside in a district of Tallinn and a smaller town on the outskirts. For the County of Eastern Viru it's Narva and a few smaller soviet era mono-towns. In both cases the rural areas are overwhelmingly ethnically Estonian. In terms of area Estonians inhabit and dominate a far far greater percentage of the land than "russians". Pic related how it actually looks like.

Pic related also answers your question.

>hey we forcibly settled a bunch of political prisoners here and you didn't stop us, so this land is ours now
the eternal Moskal

Wrong. In the case of Estonia at least.
Part of the deal with Yeltsin to get Russian troops out of Estonia in 1994. Also, by ~1995 mass deportations would have hurt the prospects of joining both EU and NATO and made the country into a pariah state and quite probably face reprisal from Russia itself.

>Wrong. In the case of Estonia at least.
>While most of the candidates would have to renounce their foreign citizenship to become Russians under the new procedure, exceptions are made in cases when doing this would be legally impossible. The program also can be applied to people without citizenship, which is the case for many ethnic Russians who live in the Baltic states but cannot obtain the citizenship and live under non-citizens status.
Estonia is just the smartest about handling it
rt.com/politics/russian-citizenship-ancestors-language-764/

In the current year there are many factors which wouldn't allow Estonia to
>just expel all the ethnic Russians
Putin's 'imperial citizenry' is hardly the only one or even a relevant one.

Protip: The 'Gray' passport offers more benefits than the Russian one. In certain areas the bearers of the Gray Passport are more privileged than both those with Estonian or Russian passports. It's one of the reason why the non-citizen are sort of happy to remain as such.

>'s one of the reason why the non-citizen are sort of happy to remain as such.
more like, Estonia doesn't want to grant them the citizenship

Because USSR was headed by Jews, Caucasians or Ukrainians, not Russians.

Soviet leader want to balance Russian influence by giving its territory to other soviet state. They also disperse the industry into other state to not concentrate it in RSFR. Like Antonov, started in Russia then move to Ukraine.

>Why did Russia fuck over itself by giving the RSFSR such small area under the Soviet Union?
>They could have drawn the internal borders so that all ethnic Russian areas would be theirs.
then the other nations would not be russian at all and it time they would separate

>giving the RSFSR such small area under the Soviet Union
What are you on, mate?
RSFSR is fucking huge, containing dozens of non-Russian nationalities. If anything it should have been a lot smaller.
Some of the lands on the map weren't even majority Russian until the 1930-50s, when they were colonized with Russians and/or had the native population ethnically cleansed (see Crimean Tatars, colonization of Kazakhstan under Stalin...).

The real question should be:
Why did a supposedly multinational federation give so much power and land to one ethnicity, favoring Russians above all others?
They could have drawn the internal borders so that most non-Russian Ethnic areas would be their own republics (Tuva, Tatarstan, Chechnya, Yakutia...).

>Why did a supposedly multinational federation give so much power and land to one ethnicity, favoring Russians above all others?
Because they feared the Russian warrior, or more accurately Russia had the greatest amount of adherents willing to put them down, legacy of the Empire, even Stalin favored Russians over his native Georgia

RSFSR had different border initially.

You mean, it was a Russian empire where they imposed their will on the other ethnicities.

What would happen if that border did not change?

they thought they were theirs