claim: Tuva is a territory of Russia
evidence: The article discusses the research issues related to Tuva, the region with a unique Asian culture. It has been a Soviet-Russian territory since 1944. The "maternal" ethnic group of the Tuvans, the majority of the Republic’s population lives here. In Tuvan studies, the difference of research views and scholars’ affiliation to different traditions of the world’s schools of thought is very clearly noted. Researchers from different countries consider its legal status as a territory of Russia in different ways. One point of view is that the incorporation of Tuva into the USSR should be regarded as an annexation (it is a viewpoint shared by many researchers from Western Europe and the USA; after the 1990s some authors from the former territories of the USSR started to share it as well). The second point of view is common among Russian and Tuvan historians: the integration of Tuva was a natural result of the rapprochement of the Tuvan and Russian peoples. Researchers into the history of Asian countries, including China and Mongolia, express the third point of view: Tuva was a part of the Outer Mongolia and was taken away by Russia, but it must be returned.