Since the first genuine multi-party elections in Russia were held in December 1993, party -state relations have followed a path that diverges markedly from the pattern in other post-communist states. As some accounts demonstrate, state capture in these conditions has followed diverse patterns, but the general trend seems to be towards increasing control by parties over the state. In Russia, however, it is the state that is colonizing the parties, rather than vice versa. Especially worthy of attention are the so-called parties of power, which reflect the extent to which, and the mechanisms by which, the state manages party politics and the administrative elites keep politics out of the state in Russia's managed democracy. Recent institutional reforms by the Putin administration point towards more, rather than less, encroachment of the state in party politics, which makes Russia less than a fully-fledged multi-party democracy.In the former Soviet Union and its satellites, the communist party and the state overlapped. Decision making in all spheres of life was in effect done within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), which was effectively above the law and accountable only to itself. 1 Public offices were staffed through the CPSU's nomenklatura system. 2 After the demise of the CPSU in 1991, what remained of the Russian state was left party-less, and after the failed coup of August 1991 Russia was actually a dictatorship. The state itself, legitimized by the people's deputies and the President -not any party -was instrumental in reasserting state power for the people and instrumental in re-creating order in the Russian Federation (RF). The very concept of 'party' was strongly, negatively, associated with the party, namely the CPSU, which Yeltsin and the 'new democrats' (sometimes Hans Oversloot is in the

In the present article, it is assumed that V.V. Putin will not have the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation changed in order to help him arrange for a prolonged stay as President of Russia after his second term expires in 2008. It is also assumed that there will be no constitutional changes as to the power and the position of the prime-minister which would allow for an immediate 'return' of V.V. Putin in another capacity, namely as prime-minister, with much the same powers as he presently holds as President. The author expects that Putin will be true to his word in that he will maintain the 1993 Constitution (with the exception of minor change), that he will show to be—to use the Russian constitutional terminology—the garant of this Constitution.Nevertheless, within the framework of the 1993 Constitution, substantial changes have been made in the ordering of the Russian state, by federal law, by other means. The subordination of the subjects of the Russian Federation to the federal center, the 'emancipation' of state-politics from party politics, the 'emancipation' of democracy itself from party-politics, the penetration of societal organizations by state institutions (upravliaemaia demokratiia or suverennaia demokratiia), and the accompanying (state-) ideological changes, which have come about especially during Putin's second term, all add up to what is expected to be a lasting legacy. Putin has not changed the 1993 Constitution; he has given it its definite reading (interpretation) as it were.

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Among the institutional changes brought about or instigated during Vladimir Putin's two terms in office as President of the Russian Federation (RF), the reduction of the number of federal subjects of the RF—i.e., the number of territorial–administrative 'entities' that together constitute the Russian Federation—has perhaps attracted the least attention. However, this policy of reducing the number of subjects by bringing about what is effectively a merger of two or three subjects, thereby creating new federal subjects, is worthy of attention for a number of reasons. This policy is one of the ways in which the Federation's center (re)asserts its dominant position vis-à-vis the 'constitutive parts' of the Federation, which are, indeed, treated as 'subjects' within a more unitary state format. This policy runs counter to what appears to be a trend in many other countries where 'native peoples' (or 'indigenous peoples') are accorded various forms of self rule, often within their 'home territories' ('self-government rights').This article will address the procedures being followed to bring about the reduction of the number of subjects, as well as the reasons for merging smaller subjects, in terms of the number of inhabitants, with larger ones. The possible future of the policy of subject merger will be discussed in the final part of the article. It will be argued that the reduction of the number of subjects of the Russian Federation to merely a few dozen will entail the end of Russia as a federation; by doing so, Russia will reconstitute itself as a unitary state.

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