When Russian Empire, AKA Jail of Nations, fall apart, all nations were officially granted power to make their own national countries. Then Russian Federation started war against these independent nations and captured most of them back, killing dozens of millions in the process, but existence of these new countries was not disputed (except for few ones, like Kuban People's Republic, etc).
It's not same as separatism. It was similar to fall of other empires.
The Confederacy wasn't a distinct nation state but a faction in Civil War. Noone argues that Whites and Reds in Russia were independent nations, or would you?
Take Finland: it gained independence in much the same circumstances as Baltic states. The only difference was that USSR was not able to fully occupy it in 1940. That's it, there is no other reason an average Russian would scoff at Balts and respect Finland than getting a bloody nose there once.
What does it even mean to be a "distinct nation" really? For what it's worth, Crimea, which is the main arguing point of the whole thread, doesn't really have a distinct nation either, people there are and always have been pretty much Russian for all practical purposes, even while being a part of Ukraine. And while this isn't true for Latvia, this isn't any more true for Kalmykia (which no one argues over) either. In fact, I'd say the opposite is true.
So I call bullshit any attempts to paint things black and white here.
Did the Whites and Reds lay claim to specific land that they were declaring independent of the larger mass (note that this is distinctly different from controlling parts of the territory during wartime while laying claim to the entirety)? The Confederacy is much closer to parts of the Russian empire claiming independence than to the Whites and Reds: the only difference is the length that they were independent (though this is commonly how a nation's legitimacy is decided)
