Introduction

The relations between the federal center and regional governments have always been an integral part of the political process in Russia and an important factor in its outcomes. The collapse of the Soviet Union, two wars in Chechnya and peacekeeping in other ethnic administrative units, the political struggle between the pro-regional party “Fatherhood—All Russia” (Otechestvo—Vsya Rossiya, OVR) and the pro-centrist “Union” (Edinstvo), Vladimir Putin’s two federal reforms, and even the hostage crises in Beslan, North Ossetia—these and many other events have all drastically influenced the results of the political process in Russia since the beginning of the 1990s.