Federation treaty of 1992

   On 31 March 1992, Boris Yeltsin adopted a series of agreements collectively known as the Federation Treaty to address the concerns of regional elites and the new country’s national minorities. The new relations weakened the power of the federal government, and provided significant economic, cultural, and legislative autonomy to the “constituent units” of the Russian Federation. Moscow retained control of currency, finance and banking, communications, justice, and space exploration, while sharing responsibility for the environment, historic preservation, education, and key areas of the national economy. The ethnic republics, in particular, gained substantive control of their own affairs, while the oblasts received less independence, thus creating a system of asymmetrical federalism. Despite such dramatic devolution of power to the periphery, Tatarstan and the self-declared Chechen Republic of Ichkeriya refused to sign the new agreement, precipitating friction between Moscow and both regions; Tatarstan subsequently signed a “treaty of equals” in 1994, and Yeltsin ordered troops into Chechnya to “restore constitutional order.” After the constitutional crisis of 1993, the constituent units were renamed federal subjects, to reflect a more centralized form of federation.