2008 amendments to the Constitution of Russia

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 5th of November 2008, Dmitry Medvedev stood before Russia's Federal Assembly to deliver his first annual address as president. Buried within a speech that ranged across foreign and domestic policy was a brief, almost casual proposal: extend the term of the presidency from four years to six, and the term of the State Duma from four years to five. Within weeks, that proposal had become the first substantial change to the Russian Constitution since it was written in 1993. How did it happen so fast? Who pushed back, and who stayed silent? And what were observers in Moscow already reading into the fine print?

• 2. A Constitution Left Untouched

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  From 1993 until that November day in 2008, Russia's constitution had not seen a single meaningful revision. The only changes made in those fifteen years were minor administrative adjustments, typically the renaming of federal subjects or the paperwork involved when two regions merged. Those tweaks required a far simpler procedure than changing the core text. Articles 81.1 and 96.1 of the 1993 constitution fixed both the presidential term and the Duma's mandate at four years each. To change those articles, the framers had built in a demanding threshold: a two-thirds supermajority in the State Duma, a three-fourths supermajority in the Federation Council, and ratification by the regional legislatures of no fewer than two-thirds of Russia's 83 federal subjects. That the process would be triggered at all, and completed in under two months, surprised many who assumed the constitution was settled ground.

• 3. Medvedev's Framing

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  Medvedev himself was careful to downplay the significance of what he was proposing. In his address, he described the changes not as constitutional reform but as adjustments, clarifications that would provide, in his words, an additional resource for the institutions' stable work. He invoked democratic precedent, pointing out that countries throughout history had altered the terms of their governing bodies. He was also explicit that the changes would not apply retroactively: the sitting president and the current Duma would serve out their existing four-year terms, and the new durations would take effect only at the next elections. That assurance would later attract its own layer of speculation.

• 4. Speed Through the Duma

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  President Medvedev formally submitted the bill on the 11th of November 2008, just six days after his address. The State Duma, where pro-government parties had dominated since the 2007 election, moved with striking speed. Three separate readings were required by law, and the chamber completed all three within a week. On the 14th of November, the vote was 388 in favor and 58 against. On the 19th, it was 351 in favor and 57 against. On the 21st, 392 members voted yes and 57 voted no. Of the four parties represented in the Duma, only the Communist Party, with its 57 seats, opposed the bill at each stage. United Russia, the Liberal Democratic Party, and Fair Russia all supported it. Viktor Ilyukhin, a Communist legislator, raised an alarm during the 14th of November debate, asking why such haste was necessary and warning that an unprecedented concentration of power in one person's hands had already been established.

• 5. Voices of Opposition

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  Inside the chamber the Communists stood virtually alone, but outside parliament the fractured opposition also condemned the changes. On the 26th of November, the Federation Council, the upper house, approved the bill with 144 votes in favor and only one against. A survey conducted by VTsIOM on the 15th and the 16th of November found that 56 percent of Russians supported a longer presidency and an extended Duma term. That majority, though, was notably weaker in Russia's large cities, where skepticism ran higher.

• 6. Speculation About Putin

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  Yulia Latynina, a journalist writing for The Moscow Times, publicly speculated that the reform was actually a signal about Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin. Putin had handed the presidency to Medvedev earlier in 2008, and Medvedev's term was scheduled to expire in May 2012. Latynina suggested Putin could return sooner than that. A source from the Presidential Executive Office, cited without a name by the newspaper Vedomosti, hinted that Medvedev might resign as early as 2009. Vedomosti's source went further still, claiming the whole plan had been designed by Vladislav Surkov as far back as 2007, a year before Medvedev even took office.

• 7. Ratification and Signing

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  While the parliamentary debate attracted attention, the regional ratification process unfolded with equal speed. By the 18th of December, the legislative bodies of all 83 federal subjects of Russia had approved the amendments. The Federation Council reviewed and accepted those regional approvals on the 22nd of December. On the 30th of December, Medvedev signed the amendments into law. The text was published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the official government newspaper, and came into force on the 31st of December 2008, the final day of the year. The six-year presidential term would apply to whoever next won the office, beginning a new chapter whose first winner had, by many accounts, already been decided.