From Apparatchik to President – From Businessman to Khan: Regime Transition and Consolidation in the Russian Republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia

Abstract:

The Russian state developed a quite peculiar sort of federalism in the 1990s. The system evolved as relics from the Soviet territorial make-up changed their nature when the central state power was seriously weakened after the break-up of the Soviet Union. The result was a federal system moving ever closer to a confederation. Not only were federal laws contradictory and incomplete, the laws adopted by the federal subjects also frequently contradicted federal laws or filled in gaps where federal laws were still missing. The result was that the 89 federal subjects developed political regimes ranging from democratic systems to strongly authoritarian one-man rule.

Such a federal system calls for an investigation of the factors determining why some federal subjects turn democratic, while others develop a strongly authoritarian system. And, indeed, as the federal subjects gained increasing leverage on the political development in the Russian Federation, studies foc- using on the internal developments in Russian federal subjects emerged as a popular field of study among scholars both in Russia and in the West.

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