October Manifesto + Dumas

• The October Manifesto was published on 30th October 1905
• October Manifesto


  Granted freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly and of organizations like trade unions. It also proposed the formation of an elected national assembly called the Duma.
• The liberals were ecstatic about the October Manifesto and were prepared to cool off their support for revolutionary activities
• The October Manifesto reduced peasant unrest by promising to cancel redemption payments
• The social revolutionaries and Marxists (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks) were not impressed by the October Manifesto and continued their revolutionary activities
• The army returning from the Russo-Japanese war allowed the Tsar to concentrate on repressing the revolutionary groups
• The right-wing Union of Russian People party and the anti-Semitic Black Hundreds used violence to crush the remaining revolutionary opposition
• The Tsar did not like the October Manifesto and tried to undermine it by introducing the Fundamental Laws to strengthen his autocratic control
• Political parties in Russia after 1905

  • Octobrists (moderate conservatives)
  • Rightists (pro-Tsar, anti-liberal)
  • Cadets (liberal, wanted constitutional monarchy)
  • Trudoviks (moderate left, wanted land redistribution)
  • Progressives (moderate businessmen)
  • National parties (nationalist, wanted independence)
  • Social Democrats (Bolsheviks and Mensheviks)
  • Social Revolutionaries
• The first Duma, known as the Duma of National Hope, had reformist parties like the Cadets and Trudoviks as the largest groups
• The Tsar was horrified by the demands of the Duma deputies and saw them as a threat to his autocratic rule
• The Tsar was able to rule without relying on the Duma due to a loan from France, allowing him to avoid concessions
• Groups that supported the Tsar


  • Reformist parties
  • Writers
• Nicholas II was horrified by the demands of some of the deputies
• The Duma included demands for universal male suffrage, redistribution of land, abolition of the death penalty, and giving up of the Tsar's emergency powers
• Nicholas II saw the Duma's demands as an absolute no-no
• Nicholas II had a loan from France, so he could rule without the Duma
• Nicholas II dissolved the first Duma in June, considering it completely unworkable
• The Vyborg Appeal


  1. About 200 Duma deputies, mainly Cadets, travelled to Vyborg in Finland

  2. They urged the Russian people not to pay their taxes or perform military service
• The Tsar responded by arresting many of the Duma deputies and banning them from standing in the next election
• Stolypin


  A hardliner who had built a reputation for dealing harshly with opposition, replacing the dismissed Goremykin as Prime Minister
• The voting system remained the same for the second Duma, which is often referred to as the "Duma of national anger"
• The second Duma was completely polarized, with the left-wing reformist parties and the right-wing nationalist groups strongly opposed to each other
• Stolypin's use of Article 87

  1. He used it to pass agricultural reforms

  2. He used reports of a plot to assassinate the Tsar as an excuse to dissolve the Duma
• Stolypin radically changed the voting rules to weight them towards the nobility and landowners, reducing the representation of peasants and workers
• The third Duma


  Nicknamed the "Duma of lords and lackeys" due to its more right-wing, conservative, and pro-Tsar composition
• The third Duma was dominated by the Octobrists and the Rightists
• Stolypin's reforms


  • Land reform
  • Improvements to education, the army, and the navy
  • Replacement of unpopular land captains with justices of the peace
  • National health insurance scheme for workers
• Stolypin had to resort to suspending the Duma and using Article 87 to introduce his own policies, as the Octobrists objected that his reforms were going too far
• Stolypin was assassinated at the opera in Kiev by a left-wing revolutionary, showing that the revolutionary groups had not forgiven him for the harsh repression and the 1907 coup
• The Tsar did not seem to be overly disappointed by Stolypin's death, as there was increasing unhappiness about his reforms
• The fourth Duma, with the voting system still manipulated by Stolypin, was largely pointless and had little influence, especially after World War I started
• The workers lost faith in the Duma, with a significant increase in strikes from 1912 to 1914, culminating in the Lena Goldfields massacre
• Despite the negatives, some positives included the legal establishment of political parties and open political discussion, as well as some decent economic reforms
• The Tsar and the Duma had a problematic relationship, as the Tsar did not believe in democratic government and the reformist parties failed to develop a working relationship with the Tsarist government
• The divisions between the left-wing groups in the Duma allowed the Tsar to maintain control, as they spent more time fighting each other than the Tsarist regime