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ON 7 MAY 2008, DMITRII MEDVEDEV WAS SWORN IN as the third President of the Russian Federation. Under his two predecessors, the relationship between Moscow and the regions had undergone cataclysmic changes. Boris Yel’tsin’s rule had ushered in a period of unprecedented, albeit unsystematic and ad hoc, decentralisation (Teague 1994; Lapidus & Walker 1996). Moreover, although the 1992 Federal Treaty had prevented further fragmentation of the state, it also laid the groundwork for a fundamentally asymmetric federal structure, later further differentiated through the conclusion of bilateral power-sharing treaties between Moscow and selected regions (Solnick 1995, 2000; Kahn 2002). At the regional level, the governors soon emerged as the focal point of political power, and, somewhat reluctantly, Yel’tsin ceded his prerogative to appoint these leaders in favour of direct elections (Zlotnik 1996 …