The oldest, the most female. New State Duma in three schedules

On September 30, the first meeting of the State Duma of the ninth convocation took place. United Russia won a record 349 out of 450 seats. The final composition was formed the day before the first session. 62 people from the party lists refused their mandates - mostly “locomotives”: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and almost fifty governors. They went to the polls, but did not intend to work in the Duma, transferring seats to other candidates from the lists.

The BBC collected data on the age, gender and parliamentary experience of all 450 MPs on the day of the first meeting and compared them with the indicators of the eight previous convocations, starting in 1994. We show how much is new in the new Duma - and how the parliament, which the Central Election Commission called “rejuvenated,” turned out to be the oldest at the start of its work.

The head of the Central Election Commission, Ella Pamfilova, said on September 25, when the commission approved the election results: “The Duma has become a little younger. And so she was not old, but she became younger. The average age now is 53 years. It was 57 years old."

The BBC checked her words. According to our calculations, deputies of the new Duma are on average 54.4 years old, while the previous Duma was 57.9 years old at the end of its work. But such a comparison is incorrect: the last Duma worked for five years, and during this time its deputies became five years older.

It would be more correct to compare both Dumas on the first day of work. When the last one met for the first meeting in October 2021, its deputies were on average 53 years old. The New Duma at its first meeting on September 30 was 54.4.

That is, if you compare start with start, the new Duma is more than a year older than the last one. The State Duma has never had such an age at the start of its convocation.

The presidential administration monitors the average age of deputies, but this is not a decisive factor for it, says Farida Rustamova, a political observer and creator of the Faridaily telegram channel. According to her, the authorities are talking about “rejuvenation” in order to divert attention from the fact that “key people within the system are not changing.” This is especially true, Rustamova says, for security forces, many of whom are over 70 years old.

“The goal [of the imaginary rejuvenation] is to shift the focus from the fact that there is no real renewal in power, and most importantly, Putin himself is not getting any younger,” she explains. When selecting deputies, the authorities primarily take into account not their age, but “the interests of different lobbying groups,” adds Rustamova.

By the last day of work, September 29, the outgoing Duma had reached a record average age in history. If the composition is renewed in the same way as before, the new Duma will break this record around mid-2030. By the end of the term in 2031, her average age will be 59 years.

The oldest deputy, former first vice-mayor of Moscow Vladimir Resin, is 90 years old - there have never been older deputies in the Duma. The youngest, Georgy Arapov from New People, is 27.

There are 80 women in the new Duma, which is 18% of deputies. This has never happened before: in the last convocation at the first meeting there were 75 of them. The fewest women were in the Duma, elected in 1999 - 34, or 8%. But even now there are more than four men for every female deputy.

The oldest deputy is 89-year-old Valentina Tereshkova, the world's first female cosmonaut. She is also the oldest female deputy in the history of the Duma. The youngest is 32-year-old military doctor Daria Svetyash.

Rustamova calls the increase in the number of women in the Duma “a small compensation” for the fact that there are only a few of them in the government: “There are a lot of seats in the State Duma, and through it it is possible to create at least some semblance of [equality].” According to her, Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin can take credit for this. He is said to be in favor of having more women in the Duma, “not because his views are some kind of zealous feminist, but that’s his style.”

267 of the 450 new deputies, that is, 59%, sat in the previous Duma. This is also a record. The share of such “old-timers” has been growing in every election since 1995: then in the second Duma there were 35% of them. There are 183 newcomers who were not in the last Duma.

Four people were deputies of all nine convocations: communists Gennady Zyuganov and Nikolai Kharitonov, Socialist Revolutionary Anatoly Greshnevikov and United Russia member Oleg Morozov.

The fact that there are fewer new faces in the Duma clearly demonstrates how uncompetitive Russian politics is, says Rustamova: “Recruitment into the elite is not happening now - this is a real gerontocracy. Everyone is sitting in their place." In addition, she explains, Vladimir Putin in general does not like to fire people for no apparent reason, so as not to “offend them” and not lose loyalty within the system. This style is also being adopted by other parts of the Russian vertical: “Therefore, new faces appear very rarely, selectively, and are chosen differently from what happens when there is real competition.”