ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors turn to the analysis of the legislative's main, or, at least, namegiving function, law-making. An important feature of the Second Republic's legislative practice was the ambiguous status of presidential decrees. The 1 November 1991 resolution of the Fifth Congress that invested the President with "additional powers" created a singular juridical situation: certain presidential decrees ought to have precedence over legislative acts of the Russian Federation unless revoked by the Supreme Soviet in the course of a week. The Russian parliament was thus all but transformed from an authoritative legislature into a kind of "workshop for the study of the principles of legislative activities". Although the latter might well prove to be a good school of parliamentarianism for the Russian political elite, the transformation could hardly be hoped to boost the prestige of the institution and improve prospects for representative democracy in Russia in general.
