The parliament enjoyed the right of “interpellation” or formal questioning of ministers. If deputies raised questions about the legality of government actions—and only then—the appropriate minister or ministers had to appear in the Duma to answer questions. Although the legislature had no authority to interrogate ministers on the general conduct of policy, since such a right would have allowed it to pass a no-confidence vote, interpellation served as an important device to keep the Crown and its officials in line.
In some respects, perhaps the single most important prerogative of the new parliament was its members’ right to free speech and parliamentary immunity. From April 1906 until February 1917, the Duma provided a forum for unrestrained and often intemperate criticism of the regime. This probably contributed more to undermining the prestige of the Russian Government in the eyes of the population than all the revolutionary outrages, because it stripped the establishment of the aura of omniscience and omnipotence which it strove so hard to maintain.
To the disappointment of the opposition, the Crown retained the power to appoint ministers. This provision intensely annoyed the liberals, who wanted a parliamentary cabinet made up of their own people: it would prove the most contentious issue in relations between the government and the opposition during the final decade of the monarchy. The liberals refused to compromise on this issue: the government’s willingness in 1915–16 quietly to adopt the American system of nominating ministers acceptable to the parliament met with no response from them. Nicholas, for his part, adamantly refused to grant the Duma the power to appoint ministers because he was certain that they would make a mess of things and then wash their hands of it by resigning.
The Crown retained the right to declare war and make peace.
Last, but not least, the Crown did not fulfill the promise of the October Manifesto to assure those elected by the nation of “an effective opportunity to supervise the legality of the actions” of the administration. Apart from the right of interpellation, which could be used to embarrass the administration but not to influence its policies, parliament had no control over the bureaucracy. Members of the bureaucratic establishment, the police included, remained for all practical purposes immune to legal prosecution. The administrative corps of Imperial Russia remained, as before, a body outside parliamentary supervision and above the law—a “meta-juridical” body, as it were.
Two further provisions of the Fundamental Laws of 1906 call for comment: for although they were also to be found in other European constitutions, in Russia they would be particularly abused. As in Britain, the Duma had a normal term of five years, but it could be dissolved earlier at the monarch’s pleasure. The English Crown in modern times would not have dreamt of dissolving Parliament and calling for elections except on the advice of the leader of the parliamentary majority. In Russia, it was different: the First Duma lasted only 72 days and the Second 105 days, both sent home because the Crown was unhappy with their conduct. Only after June 1907, when it unilaterally and unconstitutionally altered the electoral law to ensure a more tractable Duma, did the Crown allow the lower chamber its normal five-year span.
Even more pernicious was the government’s recourse to Article 87 of the Fundamental Laws, which authorized it to issue emergency laws when parliament was not in session. Under the terms of this article, such laws lapsed unless approved by parliament within sixty days of reconvening. The authorities made free use of this clause, not so much to deal with emergency situations as to bypass normal legislative procedures, either because they were considered too cumbersome or because parliament was unlikely to act favorably: occasionally, the Duma was deliberately prorogued to enable the government to legislate by decree. Such practices made a mockery of the legislative powers of parliament and undermined respect for the constitution.
The existence of a legislature made it impractical to continue conducting ministerial business in the traditional manner. The Council of Ministers (Sovet Ministrov), previously a body without authority, was now made into a cabinet under a Chairman who was in fact, if not in name, a Prime Minister. In its new guise, it marked a departure from the patrimonial custom of having ministers report individually to the Tsar. Under the new arrangement, decisions taken by the Council were binding on all the ministers.*
Whether one regards the Fundamental Laws of 1906 as a major advance in Russia’s political development or as a deceptive half measure, a “pseudo-constitution” (Scheinkonstitution) as Max Weber called it, depends on one’s criteria. Judged by standards of the advanced industrial democracies, the Russian constitution certainly left a great deal to be desired. But in terms of Russia’s own past, of five hundred years of autocracy, the 1906 charter marked a giant step toward a democratic order. For the first time the government allowed elected representatives of the nation to initiate and veto legislative measures, to scrutinize the budget, to criticize the monarchy and to interrogate its ministers. If the constitutional experiment ultimately failed to bring state and society into partnership, the fault lay not so much in the shortcomings of the constitution as in the unwillingness of Crown and parliament to accept the new arrangement and function responsibly within its provisions.
Once the country had been given a parliament, it was virtually certain that its leadership would fall to the liberals. The 1905 Revolution, of which the October Manifesto had been the main fruit, had two distinct phases, the first successful, the second not. The first phase had been initiated and managed by the Union of Liberation, and reached its climax in the October Manifesto. The second phase, which began the day after the Manifesto had been issued, dissipated itself in brutal pogroms instigated by both the revolutionary and reactionary parties. It was ultimately crushed by the forces of order. As the organizers of the first, successful phase of the Revolution, the liberals were its main beneficiaries. They intended to exploit this advantage to push Russia into a full-fledged parliamentary democracy. The decision of the two principal socialist parties, the Social-Democrats and Socialists-Revolutionaries, to boycott the Duma elections ensured their victory.
The Constitutional-Democrats adopted an extremely aggressive parliamentary strategy for they saw in the socialists’ boycott a unique opportunity to capture the socialists’ constituency. They insisted on treating the new Fundamental Laws as illegitimate: only the sovereign nation, through its democratically elected representatives, had the right to draw up a constitution. The conservative liberal Vasilii Maklakov thought that the leadership of his party, spellbound by the vision of 1789, would settle for nothing less than a Constituent Assembly:
I recall the indignation of the Congress [of the Kadet Party] over the promulgation of a constitution on the eve of the Duma’s convocation. What made it especially dangerous was the absence of pretense in this indignation. The liberals should have understood that if the Emperor had convened a national representative body without setting for it legal limits, he would have opened the gates to a revolution. They did understand this now and were not frightened by the prospect. On the contrary: they rebelled against the idea that the Duma must work within the framework of rights set forth by the Constitution. Which goes to prove that they did not take this Constitution seriously. According to them, the “national representation” was sovereign and had the right to demolish all the walls which the Constitution had erected around it. One saw the source of their mentality. Their spirits were fired by memories of the Great Revolution. The Duma appeared to them as the Estates-General. Like it, it had to turn into a National Assembly and give the country a true Constitution in place of one which the vigilant Monarchy had surreptitiously granted.19