Russian Parliament in the Gap Between Past and Future — Valdai Club
parliament Russia
Konstantin Kosachev
Theories on the future of the Russian parliament – as well as assessments of its past – have become inextricably linked with current debates on the ways in which the domestic political system should be developed as a whole and the concepts and modalities of our future statehood in terms of the sovereignty of the people.
Valdai Club
Theories on the future of the Russian parliament – as well as assessments of its past – have become inextricably linked with current debates on the ways in which the domestic political system should be developed as a whole and the concepts and modalities of our future statehood in terms of the sovereignty of the people.

Even some hypothetical questions that seemed only recently to be resolved have suddenly returned to the fore: for instance, whether democracy is always better than authoritarian rule, whether Russia needs a parliament, and whether it is generally developing along the same lines as other democracies.

A surge of Stalinist nostalgia – primarily shared by those who lived not with him but with his latter day image – does not amount to a wish for nightly abductions and gulags so much as discontent with what is being popularly – and unreasonably – ascribed to democracy. The list includes ineffective and weak state institutions, outstanding social problems, the exigencies of a vertical power structure – see the Kushchevskaya village – and the poor implementation of the federal plans in the provinces. Sometimes, people think that if Stalin or someone like him were in charge, he would have put things in order, developed industry, imprisoned money grubbers and corrupt officials, scrubbed television clean, and dealt with the dissenters.

Others are propagating racialized theories that democracy, the parliamentary system, and partisanship are not beneficial for all nations and that some cannot do without an iron fist.