ABSTRACT
Pre-Communist Russia had no tradition in federalism. Conservatives have always complained that Czarist Russia copied the French revolutionary system of departments. Lenin took the article on ‘national self-determination’ in his party programme seriously enough to introduce federalism. His hierarchy of ‘Union republics’, autonomous Republics and national districts (kraj) could have been a fair solution if the whole structure of Soviet federalism had developed beyond ‘sham federalism’—distorted by the pillars of centralization such as the party, the secret service and the prokuratua (cf. von Beyme 1965; Kux 1990). Whereas the German federal units were meant to combine ‘historical and cultural community’ with ‘economic efficiency’ (Basic Law, Article 29), both criteria were lacking in the Russian federation. After the independence of the greater ethnic units of the former 15 Union Republics there were few historical units left, except some ethnic former ‘autonomous republics’ which claimed sovereign statehood after 1991. Unfortunately, most of the 89 federal units are not economically efficient areas either.
