A forgone federalization as a fundamental reason for the Russian Empire decline

The article is devoted to the consideration of the problem of federalization of the Russian state. Since the XVI century. Russia was a multinational state inhabited by Slavic, Turkic, Finno-Ugric peoples. All these peoples were part of the population of the Russian state due to the rise and further expansion of the Moscow principality, which first formed the backbone of resistance to the Golden Horde, and later created the united Russian state. The article examines how the nature of the Moscow principality influenced the «autocracy» of the Russian kingdom, and later the Russian Empire. The main purpose of the study is to identify trends and patterns in the development of the Russian state that prevented its earlier federalization. To achieve this goal, the author considers the problems of determining the chronology of Russia as a multinational state, denotes the main directions of state building and obstacles to creating the prerequisites for federalization on the eve of the rise of Moscow and the unification of Russian principalities, reveals the reasons for the popularization of federalism at the beginning of the 19th century, characterizes the programs of the Decembrists to federalize Russia, based on the draft program document of the Northern Secret Society — the Constitution of N. M. Muravyov, analyzes the consequences of the Decembrist anti-government uprising, reveals the reasons for the delay in decision-making and ignoring problems by the center of the Russian Empire before the February Revolution. To achieve scientificity, the author uses evidence: documents, historical facts and legal norms. In addition, the article uses various positions of researchers of this problem, which makes it possible to achieve an unbiased narrative. The article is aimed at a wide chronological framework analysis of the process of state building of the Russian state, explaining the reasons for certain problems of such state building and identifying deep connections between individual events in Russian history. The set of goals and objectives of the study, as well as the chronological sequence of the narrative, forms a stable ideological framework aimed at the fundamental study of the prerequisites of modern federalism in Russia.