ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the formal and informal jurisdiction over Russia's nuclear complex. It explores the political and economic relationship between center and region in the nuclear sphere, as opposed to regulatory oversight and relations between regional administrations and specific facilities that are reviewed elsewhere in this volume. The chapter reviews the legal division of responsibility, summarizing the matryoshka structure of governance that has set the parameters for nuclear regionalism in contemporary Russia. It describes the informal political character of center-periphery bargaining on nuclear issues that has emerged amid the uncertainty in the formal legal structure. The chapter examines the respective behavioral motives that animate "nuclear regionalism" in Russia's matryoshka federal structure. It analyzes the prospects for cooperation among central and regional offices in the nuclear sphere. There was a paradox concerning the status, fate, and economic use of the components of the Russian nuclear complex.
