This article discusses the role of the Russian Federal Assembly in legislating containment of the 2011/2012 domestic protests, the increased contentious politics that followed with the 2018 Navalny campaign, and the 2019 Golunov and Moscow City Council electoral demonstrations. It scrutinizes the evolution of restrictive legislation from 2012 to 2021 and finds that, after the protests of 2011/2012 the Federal Assembly has played an ever more important role in redesigning legislation that undercut the liberal framework of the 1993 Constitution. The study contributes to understanding the role of legislatures in post-Soviet patrimonial regimes; and it discusses how Russia’s patrimonial legislatures respond to popular protest and contentious politics by restructuring societal expectations and enhancing the regime’s coercive capacity, cementing it in personalized authoritarianism.