ABSTRACT
The birth of parliamentarianism in Russia has been tortuous. Three times in Russian history a legislature has been dissolved by force: on 9 July 1906 Nicholas II used troops to dissolve the First State Duma, only two months after its convocation; the long-awaited Constituent Assembly met for only one day on 5 January 1918 and was forcibly prevented by the Bolsheviks from reconvening the next day; and on 21 September 1993 Yeltsin ordered the dissolution of the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies (CPD) and the Supreme Soviet. In addition, the Soviet CPD, established amidst so many high hopes by Gorbachev in 1988-9, was prematurely terminated in September 1991, and its Supreme Soviet followed into the dustbin of history by the end of the year. The first two prerevolutionary State Dumas were dissolved prematurely (the First, as noted, by force, and the Second lasted only three months from February to June 1907), the Third (1907-12) lasted its full term, the Fourth was brought to a sudden end in February 1917, and none were marked by conspicuous success in bringing executive authority under effective control. After 1993 Russia tried once again to establish a viable parliamentary system.
The 1993 constitution abolished the two-tier system of Congress and Supreme Soviet and created a bicameral Federal Assembly: the upper house, the Federation Council (FC), made up (at the time) of 178 representatives, two each from Russia’s 89 federal components; and the lower house, the State Duma, with 450 deputies elected for a four-year term. The establishment of the Federal Assembly marked a decisive break with Soviet traditions. The constitution outlined the functions of the two chambers of parliament, with the powers granted to the Assembly balanced by countervailing powers of the executive. Although the powers granted the Federal Assembly are relatively weak, they are far from negligible. The First State Duma elected in December 1993 was an interim one and lasted only two years. A mixed electoral system was adopted for the first four dumas, with half the deputies elected by a proportional party-list system and half from single-member constituencies; whereas the elections to the Fifth in 2007 were entirely proportional (Chapter 8). As we can see from Table 9.1, the composition of the
Duma reflects a combination of a stable core membership and a fluid periphery. Table 9.2 demonstrates that with the collapse of the Women of Russia bloc, the predominance of men in the Duma increased.
