ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1999, the Russian and Western media brought reports about a new phenomenon in Russian politics. For the first time, the regions, or rather their governors, seemed to emerge as major power-brokers in Russian politics. As the Yeltsin era was clearly drawing to a close, the Russian governors (in tandem with the republican presidents) looked destined to play the role of kingmaker. A year later, however, in the summer of 2000, the governors lay with broken backs on the political battlefield. Not only had they failed to influence the election of Yeltsin’s successor, they had also been deprived of much of their formal, not to mention informal, power.
