The findings of Chapter 5 compel us to ask, how then are regional understandings of the economy related to movements for greater sovereignty? I argue that content analysis of Sverdlovsk newspaper articles related to the sovereignty movement will demonstrate that the movement for a Urals Republic was driven by concerns over inequality, both economic and constitutional. In other words, the movement was based on regional actors' belief that Sverdlovsk Oblast was treated unfairly in the Federation by the existing institutional structure, and that greater economic and political autonomy in the form of upgraded political status – to republic – was the solution to the inequality and adverse economic circumstances facing Sverdlovsk.

The analysis of regional actors' arguments for and against the movement for a Urals Republic also provides evidence that economic and constitutional inequality were not merely concepts strategically invented by regional elites in Sverdlovsk. By analyzing the arguments made by Sverdlovsk actors against the movement for a Urals Republics, I show that these anti-Urals Republic arguments did not dispute the claims of economic and constitutional inequality but instead focused mainly on the threat to the unity and continued existence of the Russian Federation and on claims of the illegality of the sovereignty movement.

Finally, by contrasting the arguments presented by Sverdlovsk and non-Sverdlovsk actors regarding the causes of the movement for a Urals Republic, the content analysis in this chapter also provides evidence of a particularly regional understanding of the economy, in the sense that Sverdlovsk actors share particular beliefs; for example, the issue of inequality is salient among Sverdlovsk actors only.