ABSTRACT
This chapter explores basic cognitive structures behind the Russian parliamentary discourse and to ascertain whether records of recent parliamentary debates contain any signs of transition from the traditional to the modern understanding of politics and promise corresponding changes in the type of social integration. The qualification can also be extended to include organisations, provided they have the proper deliberating and decision-making structures. A political party of the classic West European type would be a good example of such an organisation. A still better example is provided by parliaments. In Soviet political discourse political situations were ordinarily presented as clusters of interacting processes. The practical methodological problem is how to distinguish between references to "the people" that suggest the mentality of sobornost' and the conventional democratic rhetoric. Situational and mental predicates excluded, the only viable alternative is reference to a character predicate, i.e. the agency's intrinsic and, therefore, inalienable attribute.
