Secessionism from the Bottom Up Democratization, Nationalism, and Local Accountability in the Russian Transition

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.