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Abstract:
In a foreseeable future, federalism remains an important part of Russian political life, despite stubborn efforts by Vladimir Putin during his presidency to deprive it of many of its essential traits. The Russian model of federalism is described, after Andrey Zakharov, as unitary federalism. This is because the very idea of federalism is flawed, masking the efforts to influence political reality without subscribing to its core concept. Unitary federalism plays an important role in contemporary authoritarian Russia; it is one of its corner stones responsible for its durability. Together with some other innovations, liberal and oppressive, as far as symbolic and psychological deeds, introduced between 2012 and 2014, it represents an attempt to prolong its nondemocratic characteristic.
