The Crisis of Sobornost': Parliamentary Discourse in Present-Day Russia

Abstract

Russian political culture has always rejected parliamentarianism. Following the collapse of the Soviet regime, this culture is now in crisis. Is it likely to be more favorable to parliamentarianism after the crisis is over? The paper seeks to answer this question by analysing recent trends in the mentality of the Russian political elite. These are identified through the use of `pseudo-agencies' as characteristic of the traditional Russian/Soviet political discourse. Special semantic methods are employed to distinguish between `authentic political agencies' and `pseudo-agencies' in the verbatim records of the Ninth Congress of People's Deputies (March 1993) which constitute the empirical base of the study. The findings are used to range the various political forces according to the degree of deviation from the traditional ontological patterns.

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