Between repressive laws and will of the deputies to exist at all costs, the Duma, a simple recording chamber, knew the most active year in its recent history.
By Benoît Vitkine (Moscow, correspondent)
In a country where the president decides almost everything, the observation seems counter-intuitive. However, a recent count has confirmed it: Russia of 2022 was taken from an unprecedented legislative frenzy. During the year, the Duma, the lower chamber, adopted 653 laws, “the greatest quantity of the whole history of Parliament, a record since the end of the Soviet Union”, in 1991, S ‘ is congratulated its president, Viatcheslav Volodine, during the final session.
This winter session has also taken on the appearance of a frenzied sprint, with votes organized in the chain to endorse laws deemed priority. On December 21, it is for example a law punishing with prison terms going up to life incentive to sabotage – a tailor -made text to fight incessant fires of military recruitment – or another officially giving access At the FSB, the Russian security services, to taxi applications to trace the travel of citizens.
The same week, three other more symbolic legislations are voted in a blow: one prohibits the use of foreign words when their Russian equivalent exists; The other punishes up to five years in prison the “public desecration” of the Saint-Georges ribbon, an emblem inherited from Tsarism and especially the Second World War and became a symbol of patriotism. The third, adopted for the time being at first reading, recognizes as “extremists” the geographic cards which do not correctly represent the Russian borders – however fairly moving in the face of the counter -offensives of the Ukrainian army in the territories recently annexed by Moscow.
“Crazy printer”
Each time, the procedure is done in an accelerated manner: enough to return to the Duma its nickname a forgotten time, “the mad printer”, won after the cattle movement of 2011-2012, when the deputies adopted, Without even having time to read them, repressive texts prepared by the Kremlin.
L’Air du temps has changed, in ten years, but the time is still for mobilization in the face of interior and exterior dangers. If Viatcheslav Volodine welcomed, on December 26, that 33 % of the texts adopted in 2022 concern social policy, the most important laws are undoubtedly those of a repressive nature.
From March 4, ten days after the start of the “special military operation” in Ukraine, on February 24, the tone had been set by the adoption of ad hoc laws, punishing the dissemination of “false news “On the action of the Russian army or” discrediting “the armed forces. These two texts were enough to eliminate the last independent media and to silence any dispute of the conflict, with nearly 6,000 judgments pronounced, sometimes accompanied by long prison terms for political opponents.
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