ABSTRACT
The tertius gaudens significantly affects the particularities of intergovernmental relations. When regional autonomy is given rather than won, regional communities do not perceive it as something valuable that they need to protect. The act of terrorism and the actions surrounding the fearful episode reflected all the particularities and difficulties of intergovernmental and interregional relations in Russia. This chapter describes the basic results of the Russian path to federalism and explain why the biggest country in the world became so close to the unitary model. It discusses basic differences in the content of coming-together and holding-together federalisms. The chapter examines the preconditions, causes, and particularities of federalization in both scenarios. The presidential reprimand to governors, and many other pieces of evidence concerning intergovernmental relations in the 2000s and the 2010s, demonstrates that Russian federalism, if it exists, differs significantly from "classic" cases of federal states.
