Ewolucja formowania składu Rady Federacji Zgromadzenia Federalnego Federacji Rosyjskiej

The Constitution of the Russian Federation of 5 December 1993, establishing a bicameral parliament (the Federal Assembly), does not provide specifi c rules for determining the composition of the upper chamber — the Council of the Federation. The authors of the Constitution restrict themselves to declaration that this authority shall consist of includes two representatives from each subject of the Russian Federation (one from the legislative and one from the executive body of state authority), while the adoption of the procedure for its selection has been left for federal laws. The solutions established so far in this respect have proved to be unstable. The Federal Law of December 5, 2012, adopted the current procedure for creating the composition of the Council of Federation, the fourth since its inception. All the solutions so far existing which are presented chronologically in the article refl ected different concepts of representation of the Federation’s subjects and were usually dictated by current policy goals. They were of a unique character in comparison to the methods used for creating compositions of second chambers in other federal countries. Moreover, they were subject of permanent and lively disputes between the Russian constitutional law and political science theorists, also described in the article.