Honestly, the communist structure looks like a bounteous flower shop of institutions compared to what we have now. When the Chinese try to understand Russia, they have trouble, because in China they at least have a party with party organs. In Russia, there really are no meaningful institutions. The party is the president's party—United Russia—and the parliament is the president's parliament. The only institution that meets regularly is his security council, and the security council is basically there to receive orders from Mr. Putin.
The Russian way of talking about it as the “power vertical”, I think, is more useful than our way of talking about it as institutions. The way it all stops is when the people one rung down on the vertical slow down, stop doing what Mr. Putin says and give him something to think about.