№ 2 - 2006
Gelman V.Ya.
Leviathan's Come-Back? (Policy of Recentralization in Contemporary Russia)

The article presents comprehensive analysis of the recentralization policy started in 2000 by V.Putin's administration and directed at the restoration of the federal power organs' control over the key levers of administering the country. On thoroughly analyzing the sources and the concrete content of this policy, the author qualifies it as "Soviet solution of post-Soviet problems". According to his conclusion, the transformation of the course of recentralization into "new centralism" was conditioned, on the one hand, by the removal of competition of federal elites and by the Center's monopoly of working out and adopting political decisions and, on the other, by normative ideals and political ideas of the country's leaders, and as long as these conditions remain valid, it is hardly reasonable to expect radical change of the political course chosen by the Kremlin.