Russian Federalism in the Stage of Stagnation (2000–2004)

Abstract

President Yeltsin’s motto addressed to the Russian republics to take as much sovereignty as they could swallow was aimed at the preservation of the Federation, i.e. the territorial integrity of the country. Power-sharing treaties were a compromise formula that saved Russia from collapse, putting an end to the precedent of succession set by Chechnya. However, there was an impression that the federal center had gone too far in granting special privileges to the republics and other most-developed constituent units. The federal laws significantly narrowed the provisions of the federal Constitution on delimitation of jurisdictional subjects between the bodies of state power of the Russian Federation and the bodies of state power of the constituent units and introduced the condition that conclusion of the relevant treaties was allowed only if it was determined by economic, geographical and other features of a constituent unit, and to the extent that these features define a different power than those established by federal laws. The key elements of Putin’s federal reform—deprivation of constituent units, especially the republics, of sovereignty, formation of the new tier of power—the federal districts , the new order of formation of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly, the transfer of the heads of constituent units to the purely consultative non-constitutional body—the State Council, the right of the federal President to dismiss the heads and dissolve the higher legislative bodies of constituent units were steps back in shaping federalism in Russia.