Parliament parliament of the feudal Estates type, in the 16th and 17th centuries. The term roughly means assembly of the land. It could be summoned either by tsar, or patriarch, or the Boyar Duma. Three categories of population, comparable to the Estates-General of France but with the numbering of the first two Estates reversed, participated in the assembly: Nobility and high bureaucracy, including the Boyar Duma The Holy Sobor of high Orthodox clergy Representatives of merchants and townspeople (third estate) The name of the parliament of nowadays Russian Federation is the Federal Assembly of Russia. The term for its lower house,
Parliament State Duma (which is better known than the Federal Assembly itself, and is often mistaken for the entirety of the parliament) comes from the Russian word "думать" ("dumat"), "to think". The Boyar Duma was an advisory council to the grand princes and tsars of Muscovy. The Duma was discontinued by Peter the Great, who transferred its functions to the Governing Senate in 1711. The "veche" was the highest legislature and judicial authority in the republic of Novgorod until 1478. In its sister state, Pskov, a separate veche operated until 1510. Since the Novgorod revolution of 1137 ousted the ruling grand