Witte was also instrumental in concluding arrangements in 1906 with a group of European bankers for a series of loans that restored Russian finances, which were in a state of virtual collapse through the effects of defeat in the Far East and the widespread revolts of 1905.
This was Witte's last opportunity to serve the state. He was forced to resign the premiership in April 1906, having lost what little confidence the Tsar had in him. Witte never returned to office, and his efforts to influence policy were ineffectual. Thus, in the summer and winter of 1914–15 he vainly opposed Russian entry into World War I and was sympathetic to peace feelers put out by the German government through Witte's own German banker. He died embittered and dispirited, foreseeing disaster for the tsarist empire.
Assessment.
Witte's reputation was at first eclipsed through the collapse of tsarism, but he is now appreciated as a successor to Peter I the Great in the drive to modernize a backward empire and as a forerunner of the Communists in the policy of implementing an industrial revolution from above. The “Witte period” of 1892–1903 may well be compared to the period of the First Five-Year Plan. But Witte worked in an unsympathetic political context that was perhaps incompatible with industrialization and by which he was ultimately defeated.
Lionel Kochan
Additional Reading
Theodore von Laue, Sergei Witte and the Industrialization of Russia (1963), is the only study of Witte's career that is commensurate with the importance of the subject, ending with Witte's final fall from power in 1906 (includes a useful bibliography). The Memoirs of Count Witte, trans. and ed. by Abraham Yarmolinsky (1921), remains indispensable, though the emphasis is on Witte's career in 1905–06. The Memoirs
Duma
▪ Russian assembly
Russian in full Gosudarstvennaya Duma (“State Assembly”),
elected legislative body that, along with the State Council, constituted the imperial Russian legislature from 1906 until its dissolution at the time of the March 1917 Revolution. The Duma constituted the lower house of the Russian parliament, and the State Council was the upper house. As a traditional institution, the Duma (meaning “deliberation”) had precedents in certain deliberative and advisory councils of pre-Soviet Russia, notably in the boyar dumas (existing from the 10th to the 17th century) and the city dumas (1785–1917). The Gosudarstvennaya Duma, or state duma, however, constituted the first genuine attempt toward parliamentary government in Russia.
Initiated as a result of the 1905 revolution, the Duma was established by Tsar Nicholas II in his October Manifesto (Oct. 30, 1905), which promised that it would be a representative assembly and that its approval would be necessary for the enactment of legislation. But the Fundamental Laws, issued in April 1906, before the First Duma met (May 1906), deprived it of control over state ministers and portions of the state budget and limited its ability to initiate legislation effectively.
Four Dumas met (May 10–July 21, 1906; March 5–June 16, 1907; Nov. 14, 1907–June 22, 1912; and Nov. 28, 1912–March 11, 1917). They rarely enjoyed the confidence or the cooperation of the ministers or the emperor, who retained the right to rule by decree when the Duma was not in session. The first two Dumas were elected indirectly (except in five large cities) by a system that gave undue representation to the peasantry, which the government expected to be conservative. The Dumas were, nevertheless, dominated by liberal and socialist opposition groups that demanded extensive reforms. Both Dumas were quickly dissolved by the tsar.
In 1907, by a virtual coup d'état, Prime Minister Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin restricted the franchise to reduce the representation of radical and national minority groups. The Third Duma, elected on that basis, was conservative. It generally supported the government's agrarian reforms and military reorganization; and, although it criticized bureaucratic abuses and government advisers, it survived its full five-year term.
The Fourth Duma was also conservative. But as World War I progressed, it became increasingly dissatisfied with the government's incompetence and negligence, especially in supplying the army. By the spring of 1915 the Duma had become a focal point of opposition to the imperial regime. At the outset of the March Revolution of 1917, it established the Provisional Committee of the Duma, which formed the first Provisional Government and accepted the abdication of Nicholas II.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Federation in 1993 replaced its old Soviet-era constitution with a new document that revived the name “State Duma” for the lower house of the newly created Federal Assembly, or Russian national parliament. (The Federation Council comprised the upper house.) The revived Duma consisted of 450 members elected by universal suffrage to a four-year term. Half of the Duma's members were elected by proportional representation, and the other half by single-member constituencies. The revived Duma was the chief legislative chamber and passed legislation by majority vote. The Federal Assembly could override a presidential veto of such legislation by a two-thirds majority vote. The Duma also had the right to approve the prime minister and other high government officials nominated by the president.
October Manifesto
▪ Russia [1905]
Russian Oktyabrsky Manifest
(Oct. 30 [Oct. 17, Old Style], 1905), in Russian history, document issued by the emperor Nicholas II that in effect marked the end of unlimited autocracy in Russia and ushered in an era of constitutional monarchy. Threatened by the events of the Russian Revolution of 1905 (q.v.), Nicholas faced the choice of establishing a military dictatorship or granting a constitution. On the advice of Sergey Yulevich Witte, he issued the October Manifesto, which promised to guarantee civil liberties (e.g., freedom of speech, press, and assembly), to establish a broad franchise, and to create a legislative body (the Duma [q.v.]) whose members would be popularly elected and whose approval would be necessary before the enactment of any legislation.
The manifesto satisfied enough of the moderate participants in the revolution to weaken the forces against the government and allow the revolution to be crushed. Only then did the government formally fulfill the promises of the manifesto. On April 23, 1906, the Fundamental Laws, which were to serve as a constitution, were promulgated. The Duma that was created had two houses rather than one, however, and members of only one of them were to be popularly elected. Further, the Duma had only limited control over the budget and none at all over the executive branch of the government. In addition, the civil rights and suffrage rights granted by the Fundamental Laws were far more limited than those promised by the manifesto.
Russian Revolution of 1905
uprising that was instrumental in convincing Tsar Nicholas II to attempt the transformation of the Russian government from an autocracy into a constitutional monarchy. For several years before 1905 and especially after the humiliating Russo-Japanese War (1904–05), diverse social groups demonstrated their discontent with the Russian social and political system. Their protests ranged from liberal rhetoric to strikes and included student riots and terrorist assassinations. These efforts, coordinated by the Union of Liberation, culminated in the massacre of peaceful demonstrators in the square before the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, on Bloody Sunday (January 9 [January 22, New Style], 1905).
In St. Petersburg and other major industrial centres, general strikes followed. Nicholas responded in February by announcing his intention to establish an elected assembly to advise the government. But his proposal did not satisfy the striking workers, the peasants (whose uprisings were spreading), or even the liberals of the zemstvos (local government organs) and of the professions, who by April were demanding that a constituent assembly be convened.