ABSTRACT
For most of the period between 1905 and 1991, there were parliamentary and quasi-parliamentary bodies in the Russian Empire, revolutionary Russia, and the Soviet Union. Departing from the normative approaches to parliament and parliamentarism, this study seeks to reconstruct the meanings that were attached to these terms in concrete historical and discursive contexts. It analyzes the institutions that were discussed as parliaments by contemporaries, with special attention to their symbolic and practical functions. Furthermore, tracing the broader debates on parliamentarism, also in Russian émigré circles and among foreign observers, this study strives to shed some light on the parliamentary and antiparliamentary ideas and on the reception of Russian and Soviet institutions. Finally, the study addresses the alternatives to these institutions and to parliaments in general by members of the ruling circles and oppositional intellectuals at home and abroad.
