Texas of Russia (Russian Texas; Texas of the Soviet Union)

Russia (or the former Soviet Union), like Texas, has plenty of land—some of it with oil. Also, many of these regions have shown an independent, “wild west” spirit, just like Texas.
 
Various regions have been said to be the “Texas of Russia” (or the “Russian Texas” or “Texas of the Soviet Union”), including the Ukraine, Georgia, Siberia, Kazahkstan and Tatarstan.
   
 
Google Books
These Are the Russians
by Richard Edward Lauterbach
New York, NY: Harper & Brothers
1945
Pg. 63:
“The best American pilots are from Texas, and the best Russian pilots are from the Ukraine. And since Mr. Molotov has seen fit to establish separate Narkomindels (Foreign Offices), and since the Ukraine is the Texas of the Soviet Union, I propose a toast to the first exchange of Ministers between Texas and the Ukraine.”
       
Google Books
Inside Russia Today
by John Gunther
New York, NY: Harper
1958
Pg. xiii:
Samarkand to Bukhara and Tashkent
Central Asia in General
“The Russian Texas”
Our Last Three Republics
Pg. 467:
“The Russian Texas” Kazakhstan is perfectly enormous.
   
7 August 1959, Dallas (TX) Morning News, “Courteous Guest,” section 4, pg. 2:
Rep. M. A. Feighan of Ohio is incensed because Vice-President Nixon, on his trip, called the Soviet Ukraine the “Texas of Russia.”
   
Poor Neexon, as the Russians call him. Whatever he does, somebody objects. Texans appreciate the Ohio congressman’s respect for Texas. But doesn’t the Ohioan know that Neexon was being the nice guest…just trying to pay the Ukraine the highest compliment he could think of?
   
1 June 1972, Dallas (TX) Morning News, “Warm Welcome at Kiev Ended Trip to Russia” by Robert E. Baskin, section A, pg. 23:
KIEV—Some people like to say that the Ukraine is the Texas of the Soviet Union, and certainly there are some resemblances, but they are vastly different in other respects.
   
23 April 1978, New York (NY) Times, “Cyrus Vance Puts On Mileage, With Some Results” by Barbara Slavin and Thomas Butson,  pg. E2:
Sometimes referred to by its people as “the Texas of the Soviet Union,” Georgia remains, in a Soviet context, slightly wild and woolly, with a flourishing black market in Western and other coveted consumer goods and fierce local pride.
   
BNET Research Center
Morgan Fuller Capital Group to Offer Russian Securities Directly to U.S. Investors
Business Wire,  Nov 12, 1996
(...)
Located in Tyumen, Siberia, (frequently called the “Midland Texas” of Russia), the heart of Russia’s energy and industrial area, Region Investments is a fast growing brokerage with 62 employees and over $40 million in trading volume. 
     
BNET Research Center
Small companies in the Russian petroleum business
World Oil,  Sept, 2000 by Khamit Z. Khaveev,  Rustem R. Shagiev
(...)
The basis of the oil business in the Republic of Tatarstan (the Russian Texas) is the largest oil company Tatneft-five joint ventures and 19 independent oil companies playing an ever-increasing role in oil-recovery enhancement and introduction of new technologies, including ecological ones. The Republic produces 25 million tons of oil annually, 3 million tons of which are produced by independents and joint ventures.
   
WindowonEurasia
Friday, August 24, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Moscow Needs a ‘Russian Texas,’ Nationalist Says
Paul Goble
   
Vienna, August 24 – Moscow should move quickly to create its own “Russian Texas,” an area that would be “more Russian than the capital” in order to block the rising tide of separatist sentiment in ethnic Russian regions and to make the Russian Federation more truly Russian, according to a leading Russian nationalist writer.
 
In an essay posted online yesterday, Yegor Kholmogorov argues that Moscow should be far more worried about separatist projects in ethnic Russian regions than about similar efforts in non-Russian regions to which the central authorities have devoted more attention (http://rus-proekt.ru/people/884.print).
 
“With the exception of the North Caucasus,” he writes, “the basic mass of autonomous semi-separatist formations are located within Russian territory and by definition are not capable of being sustained.” Indeed, he continues, any separatism of these regions would be thinkable only “in the context of the total collapse of Russia.”
 
BBC News
Last Updated: Saturday, 1 December 2007, 12:33 GMT
Reindeer and Politics in Russia
(...)
Oil Wealth
We were finally back in Khanty-Mansiisk - the small capital of a territory that holds half Russia’s oil.
 
A town where glossy new buildings sprout from every snowdrift.
 
For a foreigner like me who has known Russia for 30 years, it is hard not to be ravished by the quality of the facilities.
 
The performing arts school, the recreation centres, a hospital cleaner and better equipped than any I have seen in the NHS [UK National Health Service].
 
This of course is the Texas of Russia, but I know similar facilities - and a kind of middle-class lifestyle - are slowly appearing in other regions, too.