Govorukhin had been a member of the State Duma since its inauguration in 1993, running the Duma culture committee for some time. Following the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis, he had abandoned his previous democratic anti-communist convictions and sided with the national-communist opposition. In 1996, he supported Gennady Zyuganov against Boris Yeltsin during the second round of the presidential election campaign. In 2000 he took part in Russian presidential elections.