The official name of Russia is Federation of Russia. Federations are normally a bunch of semi-independant federated states that have their own local laws and tax-collecting habits, but that defer their foreign relations as well as their military to a bigger federation state.

However, present day Russia is a have made increased oppression against all kind of opposition to the Kremlin. Russia scored 3.39/10 in the democracy index in 2014, falling deep into the category of authoritarian regimes.

The principle of authoritarianism and dictatorship (a strong leadership imposes laws on everyone through the country's border) is contradictory with the principle of a federalism (each federated state has it's own laws). A best, a federation can be a federation of dictatorship states where each federated state has its own strong leadership which is independent from each-other, but I don't think such a state is viable in the long run.

So am I correct in concluding that the so called Federation of Russia is a masquerade, and that in fact the federated Oblast states have no autonomy at all when it comes to their laws, justice, executives, etc... ?