The eighth convocation of the State Duma will begin its work in the fall of 2021. For almost 20 years, the parliament has been dominated by United Russia, which all these years has occupied a majority—sometimes a constitutional one—of parliamentary seats. We have traced how the rhetoric of the State Duma has changed since its first meetings in 1994, and we tell you what they have been talking about within the walls of the Russian parliament all these years.

This tool shows when and how often deputies used certain words and word combinations during meetings of the Russian State Duma. And how does it work? It's simple: you can enter any word or combination of words in the search mask, such as Ukraine, foreign agent, Great Patriotic War, or, let's say, anecdote. If these words appear more than fifteen times in the State Duma shorthand, they are displayed on the graph: you can see how many times they were used per 100,000 words per year.

27 years, 7 legislative periods, 385,000 speeches. dekoder worked with Novaya Gazeta to sift through the meeting transcripts of the Russian State Duma to find out what and how often which MPs have spoken since 1994. How we prepared the data The graphic shows how often individual terms and combinations of terms appear in the shorthand of the State Duma from 1994 up to and including 2021.

The special project “So the Duma Says” is a joint project of Novaya Gazeta and online media dekoder.org, with the participation of the Research Center for Eastern Europe at the University of Bremen.

​​In autumn 2021, the State Duma will enter its eighth legislative period. We show in several graphics how it came about that the Russian parliament has fewer and fewer powers, while the ruling party United Russia and the president are becoming stronger and stronger. Meeting of the 1st State Duma / Photo © Vladimir Fedorenko/Sputnik Birth of the Duma On January 11, 1994, the Russian State Duma met for the first time.

27 years, 7 convocations, 385,000 speeches. dekoder and Novaya Gazeta went through all the transcripts of the Russian State Duma and created a tool that shows what deputies have been talking about, and how often, since 1994. How we analysed the data The chart shows the frequency with which individual terms or combinations of terms appear in transcripts from speeches and oral contributions made in the Russian State Duma from 1994 up until 2021.

27 years, 7 convocations, 385 thousand speeches. “decoder” and “Novaya Gazeta” went through all the transcripts of the State Duma and created a tool showing what deputies spoke about and how often since 1994. How we processed the data The graph shows how often individual words and phrases appear in the speeches of State Duma deputies from 1994 to 2021 inclusive.

The result of the Duma election is basically certain in advance. Then why is it even taking place? Is there still an opposition? And what could the election ultimately change? An FAQ by Jan Matti Dollbaum. The choice What is so interesting about the 2021 Duma election? Isn’t the result already certain anyway? It is almost certain that the United Russia party – Putin's force in parliament – ​​will control the majority of seats .

The special “The Duma Speaks” is a cooperation project between dekoder.org and Novaya Gazeta . The tool was developed in collaboration with the Eastern European Research Center at the University of Bremen as part of the SFB 1342 “Global Development Dynamics of Social Policy” . It is a continuation of the 20 Years of Putin project and inspired by the Zeit Online project 70 Years of the Bundestag: This is what the Bundestag is talking about .

We have made a tool that shows when and how often deputies of the State Duma uttered certain words and phrases during meetings. How does this work? Everything is very simple: you can write any word or phrase in the search bar, for example, Ukraine, foreign agent, Great Patriotic War or, say, anecdote. If these words are included in the State Duma transcripts more than fifteen times, a line will appear on the graph showing the frequency of their use by year per 100,000 words.