How did the autumn session of the State Duma 2023 differ from previous ones?

The running theme of the concluded autumn session of the State Duma was once again predictably a special military operation (SVO). However, by the end of 2023, according to the head of the policy department Dmitry Kamyshev, The “addictive effect” noticed by sociologists following ordinary Russians seems to have affected deputies as well. In any case, in recent months, the topic of military defense has often become “background” on the Duma agenda, increasingly giving way to the usual “pre-special operations” problems.

A new “Esweosh” set of main semantic blocks in the Duma agenda was formed in the spring of 2022 and, by and large, remains unchanged to this day. However, during the autumn session of 2023, there was a slight shift in emphasis in the work of the lower chamber: the topic of the SVO, of course, still dominated, but no longer as something extraordinary, but as an almost familiar parliamentary routine.

For example, the first block of questions, which can be conditionally called “historical,” once began historically without any quotation marks – with the Duma’s recognition of the independence of the DPR and LPR and the adoption of laws on their accession to the Russian Federation (together with the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions). But already in the spring of 2023, the “historical” began to give way to the “everyday,” when the Duma began the systematic integration of new entities into the legal space of Russia. And last fall, the main work of deputies in this direction was a targeted adjustment of previously adopted “integration” laws and, in fact, a “technical” update of the law on presidential elections to adapt it to the current situation in the new territories.

A similar metamorphosis occurred with the second semantic block, directly related to the legislative support of the special operation.

In the first year of the Council of Military District, the Duma had to quickly respond to emerging problems, so in the spring of 2022 it dealt primarily with issues of contract service in the army and regulating the work of the defense industry, and in the fall with improving the “on-the-fly” process of partial mobilization. The spring session of 2023 was also not without operational decisions (in particular, it was necessary to urgently legitimize the recruitment of volunteers into the army), but the overall emphasis clearly shifted to social support for the participants of the SVO and members of their families. And in the fall of 2023, this topic had already become unconditionally the main one, despite the fact that purely “combat” bills (like amendments that allowed the Russian Guard, following the Ministry of Defense, to create its own volunteer units) became a rare, albeit important exception.

The third block, which concerns supporting the economy and countering anti-Russian sanctions, has also become “routinized” in many ways. If in 2022 this required the adoption of urgent and often narrowly targeted laws, then in 2023 the approach became more general and systematic. And its most striking manifestation was the first truly “special operations” federal budget approved by the Duma in the fall, with a clear predominance of spending on national defense. However, at the same time, a significant increase in social spending is also planned, which can also be considered a kind of return from “emergency” to “normality” – as well as laws on increasing the minimum wage and pensions, as well as on the abolition of commissions for paying for housing and communal services for privileged categories of citizens.

The “addictive effect” also manifested itself in relation to such a sensitive topic as the fight against external and internal enemies. The deputies “dealt with” the majority of the “adversaries” over the previous year and a half, when they tore up or suspended more than two dozen international treaties, toughened punishment for saboteurs, traitors and defectors, established a new set of restrictions for foreign agents and their “accomplices”, and at the same time banned ( except in medically justified cases) gender reassignment, essentially equating it with the “ideological aggression” of the West. In the autumn session of 2023, confrontation with external enemies was essentially limited to the withdrawal of ratification of the CTBT – the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (as a “mirror response” from the United States, which has not yet ratified this agreement) – and the continuation of the parliamentary investigation into the “crimes of the Kyiv regime against minors.” And the only thing addressed to internal enemies was the bill on introducing the concept of “justification of extremism” into the Criminal Code, which was adopted so far only in the first reading.

At the same time, the reduction in the intensity of this struggle allowed the Duma to return to “eternal” topics that were raised back in purely peaceful times.

As a result, in the fall of 2023, high-profile bills were approved to limit the operation of “nalivok” in apartment buildings (in the first reading) and to ban mobile phones in school lessons (adopted as a whole). And next in line, it seems, is the even more scandalous topic of restricting abortion: last fall it was on the Duma agenda only in the form of various discussions and round tables, but a bill introduced by the Nizhny Novgorod Legislative Assembly on banning abortions in private clinics is already awaiting consideration in the first reading.

Finally, another sign of the “normalization” of the previous “mobilization” agenda can be considered a partial modification of the “Donbass consensus” that emerged in the Duma back in 2022. Its main parameters, of course, have not changed: key bills relating to the Northern Military District and the protection of the sovereignty of the Russian Federation in a broad sense are still supported almost unanimously by deputies from different factions. But in less “fateful” situations, as the practice of the autumn session 2023 has shown, a more pragmatic approach based on the principle “you to me, I to you” is also possible.

For example, the federal authorities need a convincing demonstration of Duma unanimity on the most important foreign policy issue – and here they are, a record 438 parliamentary signatures on the bill on de-ratification of the CTBT. The leadership of the lower house wants to quickly unload the Duma portfolio from stalled initiatives – and the opposition agrees to consider its obviously unpassable bills under an accelerated procedure. On the other hand, they want, say, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the SRZP, according to a long-standing tradition, to vote against the budget, even if it is emphatically “special operations” – and they calmly do this, without receiving any accusations of “betrayal” in response. And if the new leadership of the LDPR needs, for internal party reasons, to get rid of a certain deputy, the parliamentary majority calmly votes to deprive Vasily Vlasov of his Duma mandate “for absenteeism,” even if he himself is ready to prove his diligence with documents in hand.

It is still difficult to say whether the Duma’s trend towards a “return to familiarity” will continue in 2024. On the one hand, this seems to be facilitated by the launch of the presidential campaign with its attitude that “everything is going as it should”; on the other hand, a lot depends on how events will develop during the SVO. But at least the updated version of the “Donbass consensus” has every chance of gaining a foothold on the agenda of the lower house at least until the next parliamentary elections in 2026.