The second Duma met on the 6th of March 1907. M. Stolypin had not ventured to alter the electoral law without parliamentary
The second Duma.
consent, but with the aid of a complaisant Senate the provisions of the existing law were interpreted in restrictive sense for the purpose of influencing the elections. The result was, however, hardly more satisfactory to the government. The “Cadets,” it is true, lost many seats both to the Socialists and to the extreme Right, but they held the balance of the House, of which the Octobrists and the Right together only constituted one-fifth, and their leader, M. Golovin, was elected president of the House. The temper of the second Duma, was, indeed, even more democratic than that of the first; but M. Stolypin did his best to work in harmony with it, realizing that under the existing law another dissolution could but lead to a like result, and shrinking from the only alternative—an alteration of the law by a coup d'état , a course which could only be justified on the plea of extreme necessity. On the 19th of March he laid before the House his programme of reforms, which included the emancipation of the peasants from the control of the communes and the handing over to them of the crown lands and imperial estates. The majority, however, refused to be reconciled. The abolition of the field courts martial was demanded; on the 13th of April a bill for the expropriation of landlords was carried by a two-thirds majority, [65] and the 30th the Army Bill would have been lost but for the Polish vote. The crisis came with the discovery of a treasonable plot for the subornation of the army, in which many Socialist members of the Duma were involved. On the 14th of June Stolypin's proposal for the arrest of 16 members and the indictment of 55 was shelved by being referred to a committee.
Alteration by ukaz of the electoral law.
The excuse for which the government had been waiting was thus provided, and two days later the Duma was dissolved. An imperial ukaz fixed the new elections of the for the 14th of September, and the meeting of the third Duma for the 14th of November; at the same time, in violation of the October manifesto, the electoral law was altered, so as to secure a representation at once more Russian and more conservative. The non-Russian frontier provinces ( okrainas ) had even before been under-represented (one member for every 350,000 inhabitants, as against one for every 250,000 in the central provinces); the members returned by Poland, the Caucasus and Siberia were now reduced from 89 to 39, those from the Central Asian steppes (25) were swept away altogether; the total number of deputies was reduced from 524 to 442. Even more drastic were the changes in the electoral machinery, by far the most complicated in Europe, established by the law of 1905. [66] This was based on the principle of indirect election, through a series of electoral colleges. It was a simple matter to manipulate these so as to throw the effective power into the hands of the propertied classes without ostensibly
The third Duma.
depriving any one of the vote. [67] The result was that in the third Duma, which met on the 15th of November 1907, the conservative Right preponderated as much as the Left had done in its two predecessors. Its president, M. Khomiakov, had been one of the founders of the “Union of 17 October,” but even the Octobrists formed but a third of the House and were compelled to act with the reactionaries of the Right; and the vice-president, Prince Volkonsky, was a member of the Union of the Russian People.
On the whole, the new Duma was fairly representative of the changed temper of the Russian people, disillusioned and weary of anarchy. The government had done wisely in obscuring the passion for democratic ideals by an appeal to Russian chauvinism, an appeal soon to bear fruit in disuniting the revolutionary parties. The congress of zemstvos , hitherto the focus of Liberalism, had petitioned the government, before the opening of the third Duma, to take measures for the restoration of order. The authorities began to exhibit something of their old spirit. M. Dubrovin, president of the Union of the Russian People and organizer of pogroms , having written a letter of congratulation to the tsar on the occasion of the coup d'état , received a gracious reply; the hideous reign of terror of the “Black Hundred” in Odessa did not prevent the Grand-duke Constantine from accepting the badge of membership of the Union. The ordinary laws, too, had been suspended; the lining and confiscation of newspapers had been resumed, and the “Cadets” had been forbidden to hold a congress. All this, however, did not argue an intention on the part of the government to revert to the autocratic status quo . M. Stolypin indeed defended the coup d'état in the Duma on the ground that the autocrat had merely altered what the autocrat had originally granted; but, while laying stress on the necessity for restoring order in the body politic, he announced a long programme of reforms, including agrarian measures, reform of local government and its extension in the frontier provinces, and state insurance of workmen. The most far-reaching of these reforms, carried in the first session of the third Duma, was the partial abolition of the communal and family ownership of land, which involved the establishment of a class of true peasant-proprietors. [68] Besides this, the Duma had passed before its adjournment on the 28th of October 1908 much useful legislation, some 300 bills in all, including two for the building of important railways on the Amur and in Siberia. Nor had it exhibited by any means a wholly docile spirit. On the 7th of June, for instance, M. Guchkov attacked the maladministration in the navy, pointing out that no reforms were possible so long as grand-dukes were at the head of its departments. The Duma endorsed this all but unanimously, and as the result the Grand-dukes Peter and Sergius resigned their posts of inspector-general of Engineers and Ordnance respectively, and the Grand-duke Nicholas his chairmanship of the Committee of National Defence. A year later the Duma again came into collision with the government in a matter highly illuminating of the struggle between the ancient traditions and the new ideas in Russia. On the 14th of June 1909 a bill was passed removing the disabilities hitherto attaching to some 15,000,000 of Old Believers. In spite of strenuous government opposition, inspired by the authorities of the Orthodox Church, amendments were carried allowing dissident ministers to assume ecclesiastical titles and to preach, and permitting Christians to join non-Christian religions or even to describe themselves as unbelievers. Thus a step forward was made in securing the freedom of conscience proclaimed in the October manifesto and denounced by a synod of Orthodox bishops at Kiev in 1908, though the rights granted by the Duma were seriously curtailed in the Imperial Council, and have been largely rendered a dead letter by the action of the administration.