Parliaments and parliamentarism in the works of Soviet dissidents, 1960s-80s.

Drawing from (self-published) and (foreign-published) materials, this article traces the understandings of parliaments and parliamentarism in individual works by Soviet dissidents and reconstructs the authors' underlying assumptions in the application of the two ideas. It focuses on the articulations and the implications of four concepts pertaining to parliamentarism - deliberation, representation, responsibility, and sovereignty - in the dissidents' criticisms of Soviet 'parliamentarism' and their own parliamentary designs. Despite the consensus that the USSR Supreme Soviet was both a façade and pseudo parliament and the frequent appeals to popular sovereignty, only a handful of authors discussed parliamentarism as the latter's manifestation before the Perestroika.