This article analyses the problem of the power vertical as a model of the relationships between the federal center and governors, considered in Vitaly Ivanov’s two-volume work “The Head of the Subject of the Russian Federation. History of Governors”. For Vitaly Ivanov, the “vertical” format of relationships between the federal government and the governors is the only possible one, and any departure from it leads to a weakening of the federal authorities and risks the dissolution of the state. The analysis of the concept presented by Ivanov reveals a number of serious internal contradictions, such as a retrospective explanation of the structure of power in the USSR, a fascination with imaginary risks and the presence of state traumas, the presence of humiliation and punishment, and a specific way of their distribution as an integral feature of the power vertical.