It can be predicted that social problems will become the most significant in the coming years / Ekaterina Shirinkina / Vedomosti

Voters have started writing more appeals to State Duma deputies, according to statistics published on Thursday on the chamber's official website. The number of letters during the spring session increased by 2.4 times compared to the autumn session - 159,400 against 65,400. Citizens can send appeals not only to the Duma, but also to factions and specific deputies; in total, from January to July, deputies personally received 96,500 appeals, and factions - 14,400.

United Russia leads in the number of letters - 70.4% of all requests, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation - 11%, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia - 10.8%, and the Socialist Revolutionary Party - 7.4%. The Duma's report says that most of the requests in the spring concerned the social sphere (28.3% of the total), while during the autumn session most requests were on political topics. In addition, 5,200 people were received in the Duma's reception room from January to July. The main topics of personal requests were the state, society and politics, while in the autumn citizens were more interested in defense and security issues. In personal reception of citizens, the Socialist Revolutionary Party outstripped the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and the Communist Party, receiving 23% of visitors (LDPR - 16%, Communist Party - 14%). 47% of such citizens contacted United Russia.

A source in the Duma apparatus explained to Vedomosti that 78% of requests are made via the online reception and the ability to submit requests has become more convenient due to the new website. According to him, most of the correspondence is addressed to Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, followed by LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky. More than 5,000 requests were received in July regarding pension reform. "That's a lot in just one month and just on this topic," the official says.

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"The spring session lasted almost twice as long as the autumn one, but we see that the number of requests is growing even with the adjustment for the different duration of the sessions," notes political scientist Alexander Pozhalov. "The increase in the number of requests shows the fruitfulness of the Duma leadership's efforts to encourage deputies to constantly work personally with voters in various forms," he suggests. "In the spring, the schedule of plenary sessions was changed so that deputies could spend more time working in the regions, so the number of personally submitted requests almost doubled. Also, in the first half of the year, the Duma found itself at the center of issues around which public campaigns were held with the submission of requests: pension reform, the fight against baiting stations, the topic of combating harassment," Pozhalov believes. The sharp increase in the share of requests on the social agenda is due to the fact that the Duma was collecting information from the regions on current issues of social policy, the expert notes.

The majority of the Russian population is in very constrained socio-economic conditions, explains political scientist Fyodor Krasheninnikov. "And if in more or less well-fed times citizens solved their problems themselves, now the situation has become much more difficult, and in desperation citizens are trying to use even such non-working mechanisms as filing complaints with deputies," he says. It is safe to predict that social problems will become the most significant in the coming years, the expert continues: "The population does not want to talk to the authorities about geopolitics and Ukraine, they are concerned with completely different issues."

Voters have begun to complain more often to State Duma deputies