ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the changing relationship between the Russian national government and provincial authorities. One of the legacies of the communist period was a complicated patchwork of administrative units within the union republics that became independent states with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Nowhere was the assortment of administrative entities as varied as in Russia. There existed a total of 86 administrative units higher them the city and district level, including 16 autonomous republics (autonomous soviet socialist republics, or ASSRs, based on ethnic groups), 6 krais (mostly large, sparsely populated territories), 49 oblasts (the most widespread unit), 5 autonomous oblasts (ethnic units within krais), and 10 autonomous okrugs (lower-level ethnic units within oblasts and krais). In addition, Moscow and St. Petersburg had a special status virtually equal to that of oblasts. Thus, by early 1993, with the breakup of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR into the separate Chechen and Ingush republics, there were 89 administrative units in the Russian Federation.
