ABSTRACT
Vladimir Putin’s first major initiative as Russian president was a sweeping reorganization of the country’s federal system. Within a week of his inauguration in May 2000, Putin initiated this reorganization with a presidential decree that declared his objectives of “ensuring the exercise of the Russian Federation President’s constitutional powers [and] increasing the effectiveness of the activity of federal organs of state power.” 1 In light of the weakened state of Russia’s federal government at the time, coupled with the fact that Russia was fighting a war in Chechnya to preserve its territorial integrity, this initiative was not surprising. A reevaluation and restructuring of the pattern of relations between the federal center and various regions had become necessary because, a decade after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation had failed to construct a coherent system to manage these relations. The federal government remained incapable of consistently exercising authority over Russia’s eighty-nine provinces (or federation subjects) while regional leaders claimed varying degrees of political and economic autonomy and— in the case of Chechnya—independence. 2
