Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 20, 2019 will deliver another address to the Federal Assembly. Here is a review of some statistics, facts and figures about Russian presidential state-of-the-nation messages since 2000 - their duration, length, frequency usage of some words, etc.
Duration
The longest message - 1 hour and 55 minutes was delivered by Vladimir Putin in 2018. The briefest speeches - each 48 minutes long - he made twice: in 2004 and 2005. On the average Vladimir Putin’s statements lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes, and Dmitry Medvedev’s, 1 hour and 20 minutes.
Length
The longest speech consisting of 11,428 words was delivered by Vladimir Putin in 2018. His first address to both houses of the Russian parliament in 2000 was the shortest over the past 19 years - 5,146 words. Vladimir Putin’s messages averaged 6,944 words and Dmitry Medvedev’s - 7,888.
Guests
Traditionally the ceremony is attended by an audience of about 1,000 (upper and lower house members, government ministers, presidential staff officials, heads of the Constitutional Court and Supreme Court, diplomats, journalists, etc). In 2000, there were 980 guests. The record was set in 2013 - 1,100.
Number of instructions
In 2005, the Russian leader’s address to the Federal Assembly was followed by the publication of a list of 15 instructions to the government concerning the implementation of the presidential message. In the two following years the instructions for implementing the message were published by the government. Since 2008 the head of state has issued instructions to the Cabinet of ministers on the regular basis. The longest list of instructions - 57 - was in 2013, and the shortest ones - in 2008 and 2018 (seven on each). In 2016 the president issued 25 instructions.
Key words
The word "state" is one of the most frequent ones in the presidential messages. In his first address in 2000 Vladimir Putin used it most often - 97 times.
The fewest mentions of the word "state" (eight) was in the 2016 presidential address. The president pronounced the word "Russia" most often in 2018 (107 times). It was the rarest (33 mentions) in Dmitry Medvedev’s message in 2010.
