Read the first part here .

The effect of surprise

In normal Duma practice, it is not difficult to guess the fate of a bill based on external signs - the number of authors, the government's recall and the speed of initial progress. However, during the spring session of 2018, these time-tested rules failed several times, which allows us to speak cautiously about some new trend: apparently, the Duma, increasingly detached from oversight in the political bloc of the presidential administration, is much less likely to carry out “instructions” than is practicing free law-making with an unguaranteed result. Everyone is so accustomed to the fact that parliament is not an independent political entity that the version of parliamentary initiative comes to mind last and no one particularly believes in it. Then how to explain the double failure of “anti-sanctions” lawmaking? How could it happen that all the leaders of the factions, and then almost the entire composition of the majority faction, signed bills on foreign policy issues, which then could not be adopted? Let us recall that the “large anti-sanctions project” from an ominous list of 16 categories of goods and areas of economic activity that could be closed as retaliation for US and EU sanctions, by the time of adoption turned into a document of one and a half pages, allowing the government, on instructions from the president, to do what something, if it deems it necessary. The second anti-sanctions novelty - criminal liability for “compliance with sanctions” and contributing to the fact that someone was included in the sanctions lists - predictably collapsed into the actual adherence to the sanctions regime (for which there will be no criminal liability) and a “civil” article about participation in the compilation of lists , which, unfortunately, in the fall will join the list of vague articles of the Criminal Code that give wide creative freedom to any investigator obsessed with the pursuit of detection statistics. However, compared to the original swing, this is very modest.

The manifestation of new legislative morals includes the sudden appearance and equally sudden withdrawal of the draft on licensing visa centers, which was correctly or incorrectly interpreted by public opinion as an intention to close all visa centers in general and even limit exit from the country. In previous times, an initiative signed by two respectable senators, one of whom is the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, i.e., falling within the direct sphere of his competence, would have been perceived as “agreed”, most likely coming from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and would have been approved in the shortest possible time frame according to regulations. And in the current multidimensional political reality, a loud public noise arose, either (given the toxicity of the topic “the border is being closed”) spontaneously, or fueled by interested economic entities, and the authors withdrew their project. They promised to return in the fall with a new, improved version, but even if they re-introduce it, the text will no longer be the same—and neither will the attitude towards it.

The most pleasant surprise of the session was the adoption in the final reading of a draft with a ten-year history: amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure, known as “a day and a half.” Counting the time spent in a pre-trial detention center into the term of serving a sentence with an increasing coefficient in application is equal to a large-scale amnesty, and a permanent one: the law has both retroactive effect (applies to those who have already been sentenced) and to everyone who will be sentenced to imprisonment in the future . Here, the Audience Choice Award definitely goes to the Chairman of the Legislation Committee, Pavel Krasheninnikov, who for 10 years has not lost hope of carrying out his hard-fought project through all obstacles, parliamentary and political.

Damocles' pension

The fact that the Duma on July 19 adopted in the first reading the government draft on raising the retirement age was not an event in itself. No one expected anything different, although even this mandatory procedure produced small but ominous fluctuations on the mirror surface of the party life of United Russia. Dissidents who did not vote are more comic than heroic characters, the adventures of deputy Poklonskaya are difficult to take seriously, and the movements of deputy Zheleznyak along the party ladder for insiders look not like “punished for an independent position,” but like “taking advantage of the opportunity, Volodin’s man leaves Turchak’s structure.”

Nevertheless, as the Little Humpbacked Horse said, this is grief, not grief. There will be grief ahead. The general decline in the ratings of all government bodies and all official political actors, not caused, but strengthened by the announcement of the state’s refusal of part of its social obligations, has so far affected the Duma very indirectly - the principle “if you haven’t lived well, there’s nothing to start” helps here. The popularity of parliament has always been low, since citizens do not really understand the meaning of the existence of this institution. The parliamentary majority party follows the president in its rating dynamics, but at a respectful distance and with a much greater degree of volatility. At the end of July, according to FOM , those wishing to vote for United Russia if the elections were held next Sunday would be 33% (in March 2018, after the presidential elections, 53%). Judging by the general dynamics of public opinion, it is clear that citizens had some inexplicable expectations of changes from the presidential elections - expectations that manifested themselves in painful disappointment when nothing happened after the elections. Ominous signs could be noticed already when the president’s message to the Federal Assembly seemed overly foreign policy to respondents - for some reason it was believed that citizens liked cartoons with rockets so much that in gratitude they were ready to forget about everything else. Dissatisfaction with the continuation of the previous government composition, disproportionate to reality, was a manifestation of the same long-term trend, which the announcement of raising the retirement age did not cause, but intensified.

How will this affect the Duma? A year ago, it survived the adoption of an unpopular law on renovation, since it concerned only Moscow and was perceived as the responsibility of the mayor’s office, and the Duma managed to act as an open platform for discussion, organizing mass parliamentary hearings, after which the original text of the bill was significantly softened. Retirement age is a much more serious issue that concerns every family in Russia. At the same time, this reform is a government priority, supported, albeit with reservations, by the president. It is unclear what freedom of maneuver there will be to change the draft in the second reading. The only good news here is the fact that public hearings have been scheduled and the deadline for introducing amendments has been extended - almost until the end of September.

We must understand that the turning of the river of public opinion cannot be stopped either by public events or legislative amendments. The entire propaganda machine with all its forceful support is capable of slowing down, but not destroying this process. Don't be fooled by the fact that there are no mass protests right now or that the September elections will still have time to go relatively smoothly. The changes will gradually affect the entire ruling class and will affect the most important matter for it in the coming years - the transition of power. But now it would not be worth frivolously dissuading ourselves from the elements of popular discontent with the usual thesis “where are your constructive proposals?”

The author is an associate professor at the Institute of Social Sciences, RANEPA

Endless Spring of the Duma – 2