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State Duma

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State Duma

The State Duma is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia, with the upper house being the Federation Council. It was established by the Constitution of the Russian Federation in 1993.

The Duma headquarters are located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to as deputies. The State Duma replaced the Supreme Soviet as a result of the new constitution introduced by Boris Yeltsin in the aftermath of the Russian constitutional crisis of 1993, and approved in a nationwide referendum.

In the 2007 and 2011 Russian legislative elections a full party-list proportional representation with 7% electoral threshold system was used, but this was subsequently repealed. The legislature's term length was initially 2 years in the 1993–1995 elections period, and 4 years in 1999–2007 elections period; since the 2011 elections the term length is 5 years.

The history of the duma dates back to the boyar dumas of Kievan Rus' and Muscovite Russia as well Tsarist Russia. The State Duma of the Russian Empire was founded in 1905 after the violence and upheaval in the Russian Revolution of 1905 and was Russia's first elected parliament. The first two attempts by Tsar Nicholas II (1868–1918) to make it active were ineffective. Subsequently, each of these Dumas was dissolved after only a few months. The third Duma was the only one to last until the end of its five-year term.

After the 1907 electoral reform, the third Duma, elected in November 1907, was largely made up of members of the upper classes, as radical influences in the Duma had almost entirely been removed. The establishment of the Duma after the 1905 Revolution was to herald significant changes to the previous Russian Imperial autocratic system. Furthermore, the Duma was later to have an important effect on Russian history, as it was one of the contributing factors in the February Revolution of 1917, the first of two that year, which led to the abolition of the Tsarist autocracy in Russia and the overthrow of the Tsardom.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, the Soviet system of government was abolished and a new Constitution was introduced and approved by a referendum. The new Charter transformed the Russian Federation into a federal semi-presidential republic, with a bicameral parliament composed by the State Duma and the Federation Council.

In the December 1993 elections pro-Yeltsin parties won 175 seats in the Duma versus 125 seats for the left bloc. The balance of power lay with the sixty-four deputies of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. Only parties that won more than five percent of the vote were given party-list seats: eight passed the threshold in 1993. In addition to those eight parties, a pool of thirty-five deputies was entitled to form a registered group to reflect regional or sectoral interests. Business was governed by a steering committee, the Duma Council, consisting of one person from each party or group. The most important task was dividing up the chair positions in the Duma's twenty-three committees, which was done as part of a power-sharing "package" deal.

Despite the fact that the Russian Constitution states that the State Duma is elected for four years, it was decided to elect the first State Duma for two years. The 1995 election resulted in a strong boost for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which became the first political party of Russia and elected 157 seats: a Communist, Gennady Seleznyov, was elected as Speaker of the State Duma. The "presidential party" Our Home – Russia won 55 seats.

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