No Place for Discussions

From Nezavisimaya gazeta, May 19, 2026, p. 3. Complete text:

In late April, speaker of the Russian State Duma Vyacheslav Volodin addressed the Russian people on the occasion of Russian Parliamentarism Day, which this year marks 120 years since the convocation of the first State Duma. Three days earlier, Volodin wrote an op-ed piece for Rossiiskaya gazeta, where he criticized the very notion of “parliamentarism” from the standpoint of traditional values. On the one hand, the current speaker of the lower chamber offered a theoretical justification for the infamous claim by the former speaker, Boris Gryzlov, that “the State Duma is no place for discussions”; on the other, he drew a line under the second attempt to give Russia a modern parliament. (The first one was made in the early 20th century [and the second started in the post-Soviet period].)

“The Western term parliament comes from the French verb parler, which means ‘to talk,’ ” Volodin writes. “The central idea is that the parliament is a place where one speaks, i.e., argues their case.” But Russian tradition, Volodin says, is different. “The Russian word duma comes from the verb dumat, which means ‘to think,’ ‘to ponder,’ ‘to look for a solution.’ The word sobor comes from the verb sobiratsya, which means ‘to gather,’ ‘to assemble in order to work out a joint decision.’ ”

Volodin is 100% right in that Russian dumas and sobors have little to do with Western parliamentarism. Parliamentarism emerged in medieval Europe as a mechanism for interaction between the monarchy and organized estates. Parliament members did not represent some abstract “electorate”; no, they represented specific entities – urban communes, artisan guilds, chivalric orders, clerical chapters, etc. Their mandates came from those entities, and the decisions they made in the parliament were made on behalf of those entities.

This interaction was primarily legal rather than political, because it was influenced by Roman law. The very corporate essence and all the fundamental concepts of medieval parliamentarism all came from Roman law: plena potestas proctorship (i.e., representatives being granted complete authority to act on behalf of their principals), the principle quod omnes tangit, ab omnibus approbatur (“Things that affect all should be approved by all”), etc. The strength of this legal bond was a safeguard against the parliament being reduced to a body that merely rubber-stamps the monarch’s decisions.

Muscovy knew nothing about Roman law; it did not have autonomous corporations. As a result, estates did not have organized structures. This is why, instead of having “deputies” representing organized estates, sobors in Muscovy were based on a different idea: The ruler himself picked representatives from various estates. In the words of Vasily Klyuchevsky, “these people only represented their respective territories because they were appointed to do so by the central authority, not because they were authorized by their local communities.”

Instead of following the ancient principles of parliamentarism expressed in Latin, both zemsky sobors (secular assemblies) and church councils in Russia adopted a very different approach. The decisions adopted by a boyar council would typically open with the standard formula: “As instructed by the tsar, the boyars have decided the following.” In 1551, Ivan the Terrible addressed the Stoglav Synod, saying, “All of you should be unanimous in helping and assisting me.” The core idea of Russian sobors is that everybody was expected to provide unanimous support for the tsar. In the 17th century, the practice of electing some of the participants in zemsky sobors was introduced; however, the elected representatives did not form an organized force, because the nature of estates remained the same. All the decisions were still made on behalf of the monarch as the only principal. This is the key difference between Russian sobors and European parliaments, where voters were principals.

The first attempt to create a parliament in Russia in the early years of the 20th century became possible because it relied on relatively well-organized zemstvo (local self-government) institutions that were created as part of the Great Reforms [of the 1860s]. It is no coincidence that the zemstvo movement was the primary driving force behind the establishment of the first Russian parliament 120 years ago.

The next logical step for [Russian] parliamentarism was to abandon censitary suffrage in favor of universal suffrage with equal electoral rights for all. This could have been possible if Russia had produced a large class of property owners, yet progress toward this goal was cut short by the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. Nevertheless, even though the first Russian parliament was short-lived, we should definitely commend it for not being reduced to just another sobor.

After the October coup, the new authorities destroyed zemstvo institutions as a viable form of self-government and simultaneously emasculated the grassroots system of local soviets (councils), declaring that their role was to be the Party’s “flat belts,” i.e., transmission mechanisms that help the central government implement its decisions on the local level. Thus, Bolsheviks basically brought back the old idea of sobors under a different name. Representatives of unorganized masses were again picked by the central authority to sit in various assemblies.

As far as parliamentarism is concerned, only a few isolated elements (like universal suffrage) remained. They adorned the facade of the particracy system along with skeletal remains of the soviets. Simultaneously, Bolsheviks created another fundamental obstacle for the future development of parliamentarism in Russia: They completely destroyed any prospect of Russia producing a large middle class of property owners.

While in the early years of the 20th century, the reformers were prevented from creating a middle class, in the final years of the same century it was the reformers themselves who prevented this class from emerging. With the way the privatization campaign of the 1990s handled the distribution of public assets, instead of producing a middle class that would become a significant political force, it only produced a group of oligarchs. Starting in the early 2000s, the Russian oligarchic system became increasingly authoritarian. This trend was incompatible with having an independent parliament and strong civil society institutions. Instead of parliamentarism, the current system relies on two “traditional values” from Russia’s past: the Muscovy tradition of sobors [as obsequious assemblies echoing the decisions made by the authoritarian ruler – Trans.] and the Bolshevik tradition of replacing substance with a simulative façade.

As a result, as we mark 120 years since the establishment of the first Russian Duma, the Duma speaker is basically ready to declare the sobor approach as the official principle of Russian statehood as opposed to the concept of parliamentarism. As their next step, they will probably replace Russian Parliamentarism Day with Russian Sobor Day and move it [from April 27] to the day the first sobor was convened. Those who support “traditional values” will celebrate this day, but to those who want Russia to develop dynamically, it will be a day of mourning.