State Duma Speaker calls to celebrate the 100th anniversary of its establishment in Tsarist Russia

State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov put forth a proposal to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the institution of the first Russian parliament which falls on October 2005.

In October 1905, Russian Emperor Nicolas II established the First State Duma. However, he dissolved it very soon for not obeying the tsar.

"This is a high-profile anniversary, and today's State Duma cannot ignore it," Boris Gryzlov told reporters on Friday in Saint Petersburg. According to him, he already proposed to discuss this question at the April session of the CIS Inter-Parliamentary Assembly.

Boris Gryzlov believes that the coming jubilee is important not only for today's Russia. He reminded the reporters that one hundred years ago the now independent countries of the CIS were part of Russia and had their representatives in the First State Duma. "Many of those representatives later played an outstanding role in the life of their peoples. Therefore the importance of the coming date exceeds the limits of one state," said the Speaker of the Lower House of the Russian parliament.

He believes it symbolic that the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of the CIS member-countries has met in the Saint Petersburg Tavrichesky Palace where the pre-revolutionary State Duma held its sessions.

In Gryzlov's opinion, "a broad inter-state and inter-parliamentary forum should be organised to discuss not only the common past of the CIS countries, but also "the tasks of cooperation between them in the present and in the future." It "will be correct with regard to our ancestors and the entire history of parliamentarism," said the Russian Speaker.