Accusing the government of being "addicted" to imported technology, the legislators are teaming up with Russian IT developers in an effort to ban the use in those sectors of software produced in other countries, mainly the U.S.
Using foreign software makes Russia vulnerable to spying and sabotage, charged State Duma deputies Gennady Gudkov and Alexander Khinshtein, both members of United Russia, the main pro-Kremlin party.
They have proposed the ban as part of a set of planned amendments to a bill on information security, currently awaiting a second Duma reading.
Gudkov, a member of the Duma's security committee, said they "do not want to build an iron curtain for Western software," but were opposed to a powerful pressure group in Russia which was lobbying for the import of foreign IT products.
Russia's dependence on foreign software reduced the country's security and encouraged bribery among officials in charge of procurement, they alleged.
Currently, more than 90 percent of all the software used by the Russian government was of foreign origin, they said.
Russia spends nearly $12 billion a year on foreign IT products, said Gudkov.
Khinshtein said it was virtually impossible to ensure foreign companies did not build devices into their software to extract sensitive information from their users.
He said it was "silly to hope that foreign security agencies, under whose aegis large foreign companies operate" would not use the opportunity to use IT products to spy on Russia.
Under the proposal, strategic state organizations identified by the government within one year of the law's passage would be prohibited from using foreign IT products where domestic equivalents were available.
The proposed legislation is seen here as having a strong chance of eventual approval.
United Russia has a dominant positions in the Russian parliament, with enough votes to approve constitutional amendments.
Russian analysts and media have few doubts that U.S. software is the primary target.
The liberal Nyezavisimaya Gazeta daily commented that the party had declared war on Microsoft's Bill Gates.
The Moscow Times quoted Microsoft as saying Russia was the first country to join a government security program in developed in 2002, allowing government agencies to view source codes for Windows and other Microsoft products and ensure there was no security breach.
The proposed measure could serve a commercial purpose of boosting Russia's homegrown IT industry.
Calls to limit or ban foreign software comes at a time Russia is boosting exports of IT products.
While still far behind countries like India and Ireland, Russian software exports reached $1 billion last year, an increase on the previous year of nearly 30 percent.
Russia's younger generation of programmers have tended to place high in international competitions. Russian teams won five of the 12 medals at a recent global programming championship sponsored by the U.S.-based Association for Computing Machinery.
Parliament Friday approved a bill introducing tax breaks for domestic IT firms.
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