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,
State Duma (Russian Empire) October 1917. Coming under pressure from the Russian Revolution of 1905, on August 6, 1905 (O.S.), Sergei Witte (appointed by Nicholas II to manage peace negotiations with Japan after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905) issued a manifesto about the convocation of the Duma, initially thought to be a purely advisory body, the so-called Bulygin-Duma. In the subsequent October Manifesto, the Tsar promised to introduce further civil liberties, provide for broad participation in a new "State Duma", and endow the Duma with legislative and oversight powers. The State Duma was to be the lower house of a parliament, and the State