The former and the Duma

For several days, St. Petersburg became the political capital of Russia for a short time, St. Petersburg became the political capital of Russia-the whole official Moscow gathered to celebrate the centenary of the State Duma. Although President Vladimir Putin drove up to Thursday evening, in the morning, four hundred State Duma deputies, about a thousand official guests and a myriad of journalists created the appearance of the capital's political splendor of the city on the Neva.

The best hotels were allocated for the accommodation of the guests. The VIP -Person was placed in Kempinski near the Winter Palace, members of foreign delegations - in Radisson and Novotelier. The State Duma deputies were housed in the "Baltic" with a view of the Gulf of Finland, and senators and heads of regional legislative assemblies in Moscow and Dostoevskaya. Journalists modestly got a job at the St. Petersburg Hotel on the shore of Bolshaya Nevka.

Legal "National Bolsheviks"

Participants in the solemn meeting gathered in the Catherine Hall of the Tauride Palace at half past six in the morning. The deputies, who parted an hour earlier at the Moscow station, hugged each other and greeted each other, as if they had not seen each other. The detachment did not notice the loss of the fighter - none of the deputies preferred not to talk about a strange death in the hotel room of colleague Valery Kuzin.

The solemn events began the chairman of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov, who opened a memorial plaque on the facade of the palace for the 100th anniversary of parliamentarism in Russia. He was already going into the hall when the National Bolsheviks joined the game. Having settled on the roof of a neighboring building, several Limonovites launched the slogan “Such a state thought - shame for Russia!”, Bled with trellis leaflets, chanted slogans of a similar content. FSO fighters rushed to remove the National Bolsheviks and after a minute they were at the top. However, the frisky "National Bolsheviks" went along the roofs and gateways, as their historical predecessors from the agents of the tsarist guard.

Continuity

Boris Gryzlov opened a solemn meeting at 11 o’clock. In the Duma hall, 406 deputies, senators, government members, deputies of legislative assemblies and administrations of subjects, guests from Poland, Baltic, Finland and the CIS gathered. The speech of Boris Gryzlov was long, but came down to the fact that the current Duma is a successor to the pre -revolutionary. He noticed that "all deputies are experiencing a sense of historical involvement in the Tauride Palace." He praised the work of the latest compositions of the Duma, especially for amendments on a proportional electoral system. Neither Gryzlov nor subsequent speakers remembered that it was in the Tauride Palace that the famous "guard is tired" sounded.

Then, the chairman of the Constitutional Court, Valery Zorkin, and the head of the CEC, Alexander Veshnyakov, performed. Zorkin plunged into historical excursions: “The ideas of liberal measures and strong power, relevant for Russia at the beginning of the last century, are relevant now, and emphasized that it is also not basting. - Without an independent judiciary, it is impossible to implement the principles of the rule of law. "And in the end, he did not without malice for the concern for the care, hinting at the transfer of the Constitutional Court to the banks of desert waves.

Of the party leaders, as always, Vladimir Zhirinovsky was noted. He said: "The king gave a manifest not for the people, but for the ripened political elite, which ultimately betrayed him." Very soon, the liberal democrat turned onto his favorite topic: “Let you forget the friendship of peoples - it will destroy Russia!” Gryzlov had to remind the colleague of the regulations, but Zhirinovsky managed to walk through the Communists and lost the rostrum of Gennady Zyuganov. The leader of the Communist Party did not take revenge.

The latter was the independent deputy Oksana Dmitrieva and added a spoonful of tar into a stream of praise to parliamentarism. She said that after a hundred years the problems in Russia remain practically unchanged: “The deputy from St. Petersburg Aleksinsky, when discussing the budget for 1917, complained that“ we spend 5.2% of revenues on security departments, while only 2.8% ”(in 2006, the budget provides for 200 billion rubles for education and 1.2 trillion. For defense, security and law enforcement activities - security and law enforcement activities - "Newspaper").

Although the opposition was by no means present in the hall, Dmitrieva applauded. The first part of the solemn meeting ended with the adoption of the appeal "to the peoples of the world and the parliaments of the world states in connection with the 100th anniversary of the institution of the State Duma in Russia." It was read by the chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Law and State Construction Vladimir Pligin.

From Mironov to Putin

After a half-hour break, the speaker of the Federation Council Sergey Mironov, the governor of St. Petersburg Valentina Matvienko, the first deputy prime minister Alexander Zhukov and guests from neighboring countries, performed. To the annoyance of foreigners, the chief manager of the festivities Boris Gryzlov did not have to listen to their speeches, and on the sidelines whispered that it was "violation of international etiquette."

After a two -hour lunch, the meeting participants again gathered in the Duma hall and listened until nine in the evening, listened to the performances of the Chairman of the Accounts Chamber Sergey Stepashin, the Commissioner for Human Rights Vladimir Lukin, the head of PACE REN VAN DER LIDSHEN, the executive secretary of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Zhang Daiguan, the chairman Hastings.

The relatives of the first deputies were invited to the anniversary meeting - Tatyana Tigonen (granddaughter of the deputy chairman of the First Duma of Nikolai Gredeskul) and Nikolai Shlippenbach (great -grandson of the chairman of the budgetary commission of Ivan Petrunkevich). After hearing venerable old people and a strait, a tear of tenderness, the deputies have hardly concentrated on the speeches of the heads of legislative bodies of the constituent entities of the Federation. At 20 hours 20 minutes, the meeting ended with another welcoming word Boris Gryzlov. The participants in the celebration went to the Catherine Hall, where President Vladimir Putin made a welcoming speech in front of them. Today, solemn events in the Tauride Palace will continue.

The right believe that the authorities should not appeal to the heritage of the First Duma

So far, official anniversary celebrations were held in the St. Petersburg Tauride Palace on the occasion of the centenary of Russian parliamentarism, in Moscow a commemorative date was noted by activists of the Union of Right Forces. They did not hide that the shares were arranged in the peak of “pathos events held by power in St. Petersburg”.

At 11 a.m. at the Donskoy cemetery, at the grave of the chairman of the First State Duma Sergey Andreevich Muromtsev, a civilian memorial service and a rally were held. Having put the wreaths at the grave of the first Russian speaker, the gathered noted: in a certain sense, Muromtsev was lucky - he died, not having lived to the Bolshevik revolution. He is the only chairmen of the four pre -revolutionary thoughts, buried in his homeland. Subsequent Duma chairmen and many deputies found the last refuge in exile.

Two hours later, a solemn meeting was opened in the central house of the journalist, chaired by the head of the Russian Liberal Heritage Foundation, Doctor of Philosophy Alexei Kara-Murza. Kara-Murza, who, among other things, is a member of the Federal Political Council of the ATP, gave the floor to the chairman of the party Nikita Belykh and the director of the Russian Institute of Public Thought Academician Valentin Shelokhaev. At the beginning of his speech, the leader of the right -wing whites emphasized that official celebrations have a rather distant attitude to the first Russian State Duma. He recalled that in 1906 the parliamentary majority was the cadets - the party of the liberal -democratic lady, which the ATP considers one of its predecessors and images to follow. In the current State Duma, as you know, liberals are not presented at all, and the picture is completely different. In addition, the right is worried about the role in the current Duma of Communists and Nationalists. The pre -revolutionary democrats, who compromised with leftists, subsequently regretted this bitterly - such was the general opinion of historians and public figures gathered in the journalist’s house.

04/27/2006 / Olga Redichkina / St. Petersburg, the material was published in the "newspaper" No. 75 dated 04/28/2006.