ABSTRACT
The new Russian administration in Moscow in 1992–1993 was very weak and had no clear plan for reorganizing a new Russian state, and this disarray accounts for the radical changes in the relationship between the republics and Moscow. By the beginning of 1992, it was clear that there were four zones of ethnic separatism, consisting of twenty-one ethnic enclaves that threatened Russia to different degrees: the North Caucasian, Volga-Ural, and Siberian-Baikal zones; the champion of separatism of the zones, and even of all Russia, was Chechnia. Boris Yeltsin's regime sought to mitigate the consequences of rising regionalism and to establish some amount of stability in the relations between the center and the periphery through the Federal Treaty, which clearly reflected the ambivalence of the central administration toward regionalization. The treaty was supposed to outline the rights of Russian administrative units and the center, while also serving as a guarantee that Moscow would observe the rules in dealing with the provinces.
