State Duma

The State Duma was the lower house of the Russian Empire’s parliament in 1906–1917. It sat in the Tauride Palace in St Petersburg and was elected on an unequal franchise that favoured landowners. During the war it changed from a loyal opposition into the main centre of criticism of the government, and in March 1917 its leaders took power after the fall of tsardom.

A parliament on a short leash

Tsar Nicholas II promised a Duma in his manifesto of October 1905, under pressure from the revolution. The Fundamental Laws of 1906, however, left him the title of autocrat and a veto, and ministers were not answerable to the deputies. The First Duma lasted a little over two months, the Second a little over three. After its dissolution the tsar and Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin changed the electoral law in June 1907: from then on the votes of landowners and owners of town property counted for more and those of peasants for less, and fewer representatives of the non-Russian peoples sat in the Duma.

The Poles felt this. In the first two Dumas the Kingdom of Poland had 34 deputies each time, in the third 11, in the fourth 10. The Polish Circle, led in the Second and Third Dumas by Roman Dmowski and in the Fourth by Józef Świeżyński, sought autonomy for the Kingdom and Polish self-government in vain.

The Duma in wartime

The Fourth Duma, elected in 1912 with Mikhail Rodzianko as its president, met on 8 August 1914 for a one-day session. The deputies voted war credits and agreed to disperse until recalled. The leader of the Kadets, Pavel Milyukov, announced a suspension of the struggle against the government, and the Polish deputies made a declaration of loyalty. After that the Duma met only when the tsar summoned it, and no one knew when it would sit again.

The defeats of 1915 changed the mood. Under pressure from Rodzianko and the Duma the tsar dismissed the War Minister Sukhomlinov, and in the summer most of the deputies, from the progressive nationalists to the Kadets, formed the Progressive Bloc, which held 236 of the 442 seats. The Bloc demanded a government of men enjoying the confidence of the country, an amnesty and the lifting of restrictions on Poles and Jews. The tsar responded by taking supreme command, and on 16 September he adjourned the sittings.

The Duma was summoned again in February 1916, when Boris Stürmer became prime minister. The tsar then visited the Tauride Palace for the first time. Gestures were not enough. On 14 November 1916 Milyukov listed the government’s failures from the rostrum and asked: “Is this stupidity or treason?” The censors banned the printing of the speech, but copies circulated around the country, and ten days later Stürmer lost his post. In December the far-right deputy Vladimir Purishkevich called in the Duma for Russia to be freed from Rasputin, and soon afterwards he himself took part in his murder.

Revolution and the end

On 11 March 1917, during the strikes in Petrograd, the authorities decided to suspend the Duma’s sittings. On the morning of 12 March the deputies learnt of the decree, and that same day the garrison mutinied. The deputies did not openly defy the decree, but they gathered for a “private meeting” and set up the Provisional Committee of the Duma with Rodzianko at its head. During the night the committee announced that it was taking power. Its envoys Alexander Guchkov and Vasily Shulgin received the tsar’s act of abdication at Pskov, and an agreement with the Petrograd Soviet produced the Provisional Government.

The Duma itself never sat again. Rodzianko tried to keep it alive as “private meetings” of deputies, but to the soviets and the soldiers its president was the embodiment of the old propertied classes. In October 1917, ahead of the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Provisional Government formally dissolved it.