The “great social experiment” (Levada 2001) of 1990-91 led to the rebirth of parliamentary democracy in Russia after decades of dictatorship. The new parliamentarians from Russia, though not necessarily complete political novices, were “newcomers” to the world of representative democracy. Learning by doing, the new MPs, as the actors in parliamentary democracy, had to define their roles as the elected representatives of the people and accustom themselves to the rules of the parliamentary “game”. During the 1990s, political scientists had hoped that the development of Russia would have been democratic. In the first decade of the 2000s, Russia has decayed to a consolidated autocratic regime according to the Freedom House Index. Political elites have actively contributed to this development. This proposal focuses on the sub-group of political elites - members of the national parliament in Russia (representative elite) – and through inclusion of personal factors aims at improving our understanding of parliamentary recruitment, legislative careers and personality of MPs. In this paper, I investigate personal characteristics such as motivation and perceptions of social context which are typical for Russian Members of Parliament (MPs) and try to connect these results with general patterns of legislative recruitment and careers in post-Soviet Russia. In terms of time-frame this analysis takes into account the fifth term of the Russian Duma (2007-2011). I use a data set with biographical data of all MPs of the State Duma since 1993, in-depth interviews with MPs of the fifth legislative term as well as expert interviews.
