World Politics, Volume 58, Number 2, January 2006, pp. 276-310 (Article)In the early 1990s Russia stood at the precipice of state failure. Demands
for autonomy radiated from Russia’s ethnic republics, threatening
to split the federation along ethnic lines as had happened to the
Soviet Union before it. Russia’s republics had begun appropriating
power from Moscow during the late Soviet era. With the collapse of
the USSR, several accelerated their quest, asserting control over natural
resources, defying federal laws, and introducing republican presidencies.
The decisions some republics made to boycott federal elections
and stop paying federal taxes lent momentum to a process that seemed
likely to end in Russia’s disintegration.
