Daniel Göler

Russia’s Northern Periphery in Transition: Regional Fragmentation of the Far North?

As earlier chapters have demonstrated, the distribution of power in Russian federalism has been changing. Following the Yeltsin period, when the power of the centre seemed to be waning in the face of increased assertiveness from within many of the Russian republics, under Putin the centre has been able to reassert some of the control that had been lost and, in the process, cast some doubt on the continued federal nature of the system. Within many of the federal units there has also been change. The most important aspect of this has been the relationship between the political authorities and business interests. The stabilization of this relationship has in many cases produced a regime in which political and economic power has become almost fused into a form of rule with profoundly antidemocratic implications. These two processes, the centralization of power and the consolidation of local rule through the combination of political and economic power, have also occurred in peripheral regions of Russia.