The aim was to study the evolution of the institute of local self-government in the post-Soviet period of Russia's development. The research methods were content analysis of the messages of the President of the Russian Federation and work with archival materials. As a result of the analysis of the selected types of sources, the hypothesis was confirmed that the establishment of local self-government in the mid-1990s in a radical form in the form of separation from the public administration system was situationally political in nature, meeting the interests of the municipal elite. The political force that made the separation of local self-government bodies from the system of state power, the dominant discourse, became the municipal elite. Having provided support to B. in the summer and autumn of 1993. In opposition to Yeltsin with the Supreme Soviet, she received in return the maximum independence on the ground, which was fundamentally important for her in the conditions of unfolding privatization. At the same time, it was protected from control "from above" by the status of local self-government, isolated from the state structure, and there could be no control "from below", due to the absence of the middle class. The inconsistency of this form of organization of local self-government with the basic socio-economic parameters predetermined the further evolution of this institution in the direction of inclusion in the system of public power and strengthening of state control. Thus, this evolution was not a consequence of the central government's voluntaristic desire to spread authoritarian trends to the lower "floors" of management, as foreign authors often write, but a completely natural process. A particular conclusion of a methodological nature is also made that studies of the evolution of local self-government in the post-Soviet period demonstrate the limitations of a institutional approach that absolutizes the role of institutions in solving problems of social development.