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](http://knoema.fr/GDI2015JAN/democracy-index-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... ?