Translated material
Export of power
The concentration of financial resources and political powers in the center has deprived the regional authorities not only of power, but also of responsibility. Interbudgetary relations between the center and the regions have changed in recent years in only one direction: revenue items were taken away from the regions, without reducing, but even increasing, their financial obligations to the population. At the same time, the regional authorities were made independent - in the worst sense of the word - from this very population. The heads of regions are now chosen by the president, not the people. And the people can no longer replace a poorly performing regional leader in elections.
But, having taken all political and financial power for itself, the Kremlin automatically imported all the real responsibility for the situation in every point of the vast country. The consistently high rating of the president, with whose name the people do not associate any bad events, but associate a relative increase in living standards due to exorbitant world oil prices, should not be misleading. The governors, especially after being reappointed by the president, have not the slightest reason left to actively engage in the lives of ordinary people in the regions entrusted to them. It is possible to remove the governor, conditionally, of Koryakia for poor preparations for winter. But now we have to monitor how fuel is delivered to distant Koryakia from behind the Kremlin wall. And if you don’t keep track, they won’t deliver fuel.
As a result of this total centralization of power, the regional elites were left with one line of resistance: the raw materials complex of those republics that have raw materials resources. Chechnya demands to recapture its oil complex from Rosneft, which is not indifferent to the Kremlin; Bashkiria actually exchanged it for (let's call a spade a spade) the lifelong presidency of Murtaza Rakhimov. Tatarstan, it seems, managed to achieve the best results: the local oil industry, judging by the text of the agreement, will not come under the sole control of the center, and Putin has no longer decided to change Mintimer Shaimiev. Those regions that do not have oil and gas can only, with a greater or lesser degree of persistence, ask the federal center for government money for social needs.
If the current system of power is maintained for a long time, this will inevitably cause a surge in tension in the regions. If the mayor or governor rules poorly, and the population has no way to replace him democratically, sooner or later they will begin to take their anger out on the federal authorities. Or on the same foreigners, as was the case in Kondopoga, which also required the intervention of the center.
To maintain power in a giant federal multinational country, this power inevitably must be exported locally. If you want to make governors governors and appoint them from the center, without trusting people to choose locally, you still need to give these governors real powers. It is physically impossible to manage everything in Russia from Moscow.
Therefore, the agreement on the distribution of powers with Tatarstan, no matter what is written in this document and no matter how “vegetarian” it may seem, marks the beginning of the inevitable process of reverse redistribution of real power between the center and the regions. Russia is not becoming stronger because essentially uncontrolled, irresponsible and powerless regional elites publicly glorify federalism and the personal genius of the supreme ruler. Quite the contrary.