Duma Experiment

The Duma Experiment

Nicholas II and the Fundamental Laws

• To outsiders the October Manifesto might suggest that Russia was moving towards liberalism and democracy:

1. Democratic institutions established
2. Political parties legalised
3. Trade unions legalised

• Liberal historians have written about:

1. ‘the experiment in democracy’
2. ‘the constitutional experiment’

• This might have saved the monarchy if Nicholas and the Dumas had worked together
• But the Tsar and his circle had no intention of co-operating with the Duma
• He was mainly concerned with how many concessions he could withdraw without causing another revolution
• April 1906 the Fundamental Laws were announced during the elections for the first Duma
• In them Nicholas declared that ‘supreme autocratic power is vested in the Tsar of all the Russias. It is God’s command that his authority should be obeyed’
• The word ‘constitution’ was carefully not mentioned
• The Duma (state assembly) was to have 2 houses:

1. The State Council - This was the upper house, with half its members appointed by the Tsar and the rest elected by privileged groups eg landowners, clergy, gentry, industrialists responsible only to the Tsar. They could veto the lower house
2. The State Duma - An elected body with very limited powers. Tsar’s approval needed to pass laws. 40% of total budget exempt from Duma’s scrutiny eg state loans and debts. Also – spending on army, navy, and imperial courts

• Voting wasn’t the democratic model desired by liberals and socialists ie everyone having a direct vote of equal weight
• Used indirect votes by estates to reduce number of radical members elected
• The voter voted for members of an electoral college who then selected Duma members
• There were 4 electoral colleges:

1. Gentry
2. Burghers (town property owners)
3. Peasants
4. Workers

• The franchise was fixed so that one gentry vote was worth 3 burghers', 15 peasants' and 45 workers’ votes
• Tsar could: appoint ministers, declare war, make peace, dissolve the Duma
• Article 87 – the Tsar could issue any emergency laws he wished when Duma not sitting
• Duma had 2 important rights: in certain circumstances it could question ministers and free speech

Richard Pipes’s View (US historian)

• The Russian Revolution 1899-1919 p.159
• ‘This provided a forum for unrestrained and often intemperate criticism of the regime’
• He believes this contributed more to undermining the prestige of the government in the eyes of the general public than all the revolutionary outrages, because it struggled very hard to maintain, that it was in complete control of the situation

Nicholas and the Dumas

• 4 Dumas
• First ran from April-June 1906 and second from February-June 1907
• Both had centre-left majorities and were soon dismissed by Nicholas
• Franchise changed after 2^nd Duma which reduced lower class representation and made the Dumas less troublesome
• 3^rd 1907-1912 lasted full term (5 years)
• 4^th dissolved after 4 years

Kadets (Constitutional Democrats)

• Moderate or radical liberals
• Disappointed by October Manifesto
• Wanted genuine universal suffrage
• Also a strict limit on the Tsar’s power
• Success in 1906 because Socialist Revoultionaries and Social Democrats (Mensheviks and Bolsheviks) largely boycotted the elections
• Eg Kadets won all St. Petersburg and Moscow seats due to worker votes which would have gone to Social Democrats if they’d fielded candidates

Trudoviki (Labour Group)

• Left wing group
• Mainly peasants and some middle class (lawyers and teachers)
• Many would have stood as Socialist Revolutionaries if the party had fought the election

Octobrists

• Conservative or right-of-centre liberals who had welcomed the October Manifesto

Non-Russians

• Mainly Poles and some Lithuanians, Latvians and Ukrainians

Progressists

• Elite group of businessmen
• Favoured moderate reform

Rightists

• Not an organised party
• Represented a wide range of conservative views

The First Duma April-June 1906

• The election was a triumph for the Kadets and other left-wing groups which had a clear majority
• Tsar disappointed
• So was Witte – he’d told Tsar the radicals and revolutionaries had no mass support
• He said peasants would vote for  conservative candidates
• He was now viewed by the Court as a dangerous radical
• Replaced as chief minister by Ivan Goremykin a reactionary conservative
• The deputies were militant and made far-reaching demands:

1. Amnesty for political prisoners
2. Abolition of the death penalty
3. Abolition of upper house
4. Resignation of Nicholas’s ministers
5. Fully democratic electoral system
6. Fairer tax system
7. Right to strike
8. Land reform – the redistribution of surplus gentry land among the peasants

• Goremykin rejected all the demands
• After 10 weeks of bitter dispute the Tsar decided to dissolve the Duma
• The Tauride Palace where it met was surrounded by troops and deputies were forced to disperse
• In protest 200 Kadets and left-wing deputies crossed the border into Finland to meet at Vyborg
• They issued the Vyborg Manifesto to condemn government action
• Called on the people to refuse to pay taxes and do military service
• Little response from ordinary people
• Many Kadets arrested
• They were barred from Duma membership
• Feeling let down by the masses they became less radical
• Peter Stolypin became chief minister
• He introduced a policy of repression to restore order

The Second Duma February-June 1907

• Main change – Kadets lost half their seats
• This was probably because the Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries took part in the election
• Also Kadets seen as ineffectual
• Not radical enough for workers and peasants
• Too radical for liberals
• Membership of Duma more polarised than before
• Revolutionary Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries had 84 seats
• National minorities always voted with the opposition so the left wing groups still had a small majority
• Proceedings acrimonious and disorderly
• Stolypin tried to work with the Duma
• But the majority opposed his agrarian reforms
• Secret police claimed to have evidence of Social Democrats plot to assassinate Tsar
• So Stolypin had 2^nd Duma dissolved
• Next day new electoral system announced
• It reduced representation of workers, peasants and national minorities
• This breached Tsar’s own Fundamental Laws
• Meant only 1/10 of men had vote – peasants and workers more or less excluded
• Trade unions banned again
• Anyone trying to form a workers’ organisation or call a strike was arrested

The 3^rd Duma 1907-12

• The electoral changes produced a Duma with a large right-wing majority
• Smooth relations at first between Duma and government
• 1909 things going wrong for Stolypin:

1. Opposition to his plan to build 4 battleships
2. 1911 proposed extending Zemstva to western parts of the Empire but bill was defeated in Upper House – the state council

• Main reason – his right wing opponents jealous of his success
• His repressive policies restored order
• His agrarian reforms seemed to be going well
• In the eyes of reactionaries he’d outlived his usefulness
• It was the perfect opportunity to get rid of him before he introduced any more drastic reforms
• Stolypin threatened to resign unless Nicholas suspended the Duma temporarily and passed the bill as an emergency measure under Article 87 of the Fundamental Laws
• Tsar agreed but it did Stolypin no good
• Reason - Tsar felt humiliated at having to act against his right-wing supporters in the State Council
• The Octobrists were outraged by this abuse of Article 87 as they saw it
• 1^st September 1911, during a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Legend of Tsar Sultan” in Kiev, in the presence of the Tsar and his 4 daughters, Stolypin was shot  by a revolutionary who was also acting as a police informer
• He died days later in hospital
• Rumours that the secret police and even the Tsar had connived at his murder – nothing was proved
• Some historians argue that his death removed the monarchy’s last chance of survival – but it’s clear that Stolypin’s days of political influence were numbered
• The very people he was trying to save had already fatally undermined him

The 4^th Duma

• After Stolypin’s death the government seemed to abandon all ideas of reform
• Fell back on repression and reliance on reactionary support
• 4^th Duma had centre-right majority
• But it became increasingly critical of the government
• The government ignored the Duma
• By 1914 its influence was in decline
• Alexander Guchkov the Octobrist leader told the 1913 party conference: “The attempt made by the Russian public, as represented by our party, to effect a peaceful, painless transition from the old condemned system to a new order has failed. Let those in power make no mistake about the temper of the people; never were the Russian people so profoundly revolutionized by the actions of the government, for day by day faith in the government is steadily waning, and with it is waning faith in the possibility of a peaceful issue of the crisis”

Why the Duma Experiment Failed

• A little compromise on both sides could have made possible a workable liberal-conservative partnership
• This would have saved the monarchy
• But Tsar wanted to keep the monarchy intact in the autocratic sense
• He lacked the vision or imagination to see the advantages of sharing at least some of his power with parliament
• Thus some of the criticism and hostility against him would have fell on the Duma
• He said: ‘I have no intention of renouncing what was bequeathed to me by my forefathers and which I must hand down unimpaired to my son.’
• He and most of his ministers refused to admit that there was a mass movement against them
• In January 1906 Foreign Minister Count Lamsdorf argued in a secret memo that the events of 1905 had been promoted ‘by the Jews of all countries; the revolutionary movement is being actively supported and partly directed by the forces of universal Jewry.’
• Nicholas added the comment: ’I share entirely the sentiments herein expressed’
• He’d no intention of co-operating with the Duma
• Always looking for an excuse to get rid of it
• Of 2^nd Duma he said: ‘We must let them do something manifestly stupid or mean, and then –slap- and they are gone!’
• He believed the Duma would be less able to cope with complex problems facing Russia than he and his advisers
• Duma members were just as reluctant to compromise
• Went on the attack from first day
• Played into the Tsar’s hands by demanding too much at once
• Paul Milyukov, Kadet leader, demanded that the Tsar accept entire programme and call a constituent assembly
• So Duma became a battleground between autocracy and liberals