Russia and Syria have a multitude of differences when it comes to their internal political administrative units, and these are important points to reflect upon. The Syrian Arab Republic is a constitutionally unitary state, meaning that no regions or cities have autonomy or "self-rule", whereas the Russian Federation is precisely that - a federation - and large swaths of the country have a political status which grants them a broad degree of freedom to administer themselves as they'd like within certain constitutional boundaries.
The reason that these two countries have such fundamentally different domestic political frameworks is due to their unique histories and circumstances. Syria has always been a rich multi-ethnic and multi-confessional civilization for millennia, whereas Russia had only just begun to diversify away from its Russian Slavic roots in the 15
th century and continued expanding into the Imperial and nation-state eras. Syria, on the other hand, had been under Ottoman occupation since that time and up until the end of World War II, so it had an entirely different experience entering into the modern era.
Syria's Administrative Past And PresentSyria, due to
not having experienced independence for centuries as a result of Ottoman and French occupation,
was faced with the difficult task of strengthening its civic-civilizational identity in the era of nation-states,
which explains why the country took the steps towards centralizing political control over all of the separate groups inhabiting the country. This was intended to
preserve Syria's civilizational unity which had endured for millennia
and to not allow it to be torn apart by subnational identity conflict. Because Arabs were the most significant ethnos guiding the historical development of the state, the country was officially named the Syrian Arab Republic in honor of their contributions.
Independent Syria continued the policies of inclusivity and secularism which defined its historic civilization, thus allowing all ethnic and confessional groups to feel welcome in the country.
Former President Hafez Assad was insistent that this was the only way for Syria to develop and prosper into the future, which explains why he so strongly preached the need for a unified Syrian identity.
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