The article deals with particular features of the constitutional regulation of local self-government in the Russian Federation. The author argues that this regulation was based on somewhat outdated approach towards the mentioned institution, within the framework of which local self-government was considered to be a phenomenon opposing the state administration, and this in the final result has weakened its positions and determined sufficiently low efficiency of the whole local administrative system. The general model of local self-government fixed at the federal level was not perceived in full in a number of Federation subjects, and the lack of adequate financial guarantees of local self-government determined nearly general shortage of financial resources necessary for proper fulfillment of local self-government’s functions. Local authorities’ independence proclaimed in the conditions of the chronic lack of money often only helped to discredit the idea of local self-government in the eyes of the population. Certain shortcomings of constitutional regulation in the field of local self-government have been slightly corrected by the current legislation as well as by some decisions of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. Nevertheless in the conditions of present centralization of the Russian political system and the strengthening of authoritarian tendencies within its framework local self-government finds it increasingly difficult to preserve its identity as an independent level of administration.