The Russian Empire
Question & Answer

What Was the Constitution of 1906 in Russia?

The Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire were issued by Tsar Nicholas II on 23 April 1906 (6 May by the Western calendar), eight days after the opening of the First State Duma. The Laws were the first written constitution of the Russian Empire, and the legal foundation of the new parliamentary order. They were drafted by a commission under Count Dmitri Tolstoy and were finalised by Sergei Witte’s government, with the help of a group of legal advisors led by the liberal law professor Maxim Kovalevsky (Wortman, The Development of a Russian Legal Consciousness, 1976; Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 5th ed., 1993).

The background

The Fundamental Laws were the political settlement of the 1905 revolution. The October Manifesto of 17 October 1905 had promised civil liberties and a State Duma, but it had not specified the powers of the new assembly or the relationship between the assembly and the Tsar. The drafting of the laws was the work of the so-called “Witte Cabinet” of 1905-1906, with the assistance of the Council of State and the various legal advisors (Wortman, 1976).

The main provisions

The Fundamental Laws were made up of a Preamble, 124 articles, and four supplementary statutes. The most important provisions were:

  • Article 4: the Tsar retained the title of “Emperor and Autocrat,” and the article stated that “the person of the Sovereign Emperor is sacred and inviolable.” The Laws described the autocratic tradition in detail and listed the powers of the Tsar.
  • Articles 5-12: the civil list, the imperial family, and the regency in case of minority of the heir.
  • Article 22: the Russian state language was Russian, and the Russian Orthodox Church was the leading religion of the state.
  • Articles 86-93: the State Duma and the State Council. The Laws established a bicameral legislature: the State Duma, elected on a complex franchise, and the State Council, half elected and half appointed. Both chambers had to approve legislation.
  • Article 87: the emergency-decree clause. The Tsar retained the right, between sessions of the Duma, to issue decrees on urgent matters. The decrees had to be presented to the Duma within two months of its reconvening.
  • Article 11: the State Council had 98 elected members (chosen by the provincial zemstvos, the nobility, the Orthodox clergy, the academies and universities, the chambers of commerce and industry, and the Poles) and 49 appointed members.
  • Article 30: the Tsar retained the right to issue the budget, to govern by emergency decree, and to dissolve the Duma at will.

The civil liberties — the inviolability of the person, the freedom of conscience, the freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, and the freedom of association — were guaranteed in Articles 31-32. The States of the Empire (Finland, the Kingdom of Poland, the Central Asian protectorates) had their own regimes; Finland, in particular, was governed by the Finnish Diet and the Senate, not by the Fundamental Laws (Wortman, 1976).

The impact

The Fundamental Laws of 1906 were, in form, a constitution. They established a parliament with the right to vote on legislation and the budget. They established the principle of ministerial responsibility to the Duma (Article 11, although this was largely an empty formula). They protected the civil liberties of the subject. They did not, however, abolish the autocratic system: the Tsar retained the supreme autocratic power, the right to dissolve the Duma, the right to rule by emergency decree, the right to appoint and dismiss ministers, the right to conduct foreign policy, and the right to command the army and navy.

The Russian Fundamental Laws were a settlement in the legal tradition of the German Empire, the Italian Kingdom, and the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, all of which were constitutional but not parliamentary. The Russian Fundamental Laws did not, in form, make Russia a parliamentary monarchy, and the Russian system was not parliamentary until 1905-1917, when the Duma succeeded in establishing the principle of a responsible ministry (Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1990).

The reform of 1907

The Fundamental Laws of 1906 were a compromise. The Tsar’s conservative advisors wanted to preserve the autocratic tradition; the Constitutional Democrats wanted a parliamentary monarchy. The compromise was tested in the first two Dumas, both of which were dissolved by the Tsar. The 3 June 1907 coup, the day the Second Duma was dissolved, was the formal end of the Fundamental Laws’ authority over the franchise: the new electoral law of 1907 substantially reduced the representation of the peasantry, the workers, and the non-Russian nationalities. The new electoral law was itself of questionable legality: it was issued by the Tsar’s emergency-decree power, which the Fundamental Laws of 1906 had explicitly reserved to the monarch for use in times of crisis (Wortman, 1976; Pipes, 1990).

The legacy

The Fundamental Laws of 1906 were the first written constitution of the Russian Empire, and they were the legal foundation of the Russian parliament until 1917. They were, in a sense, the work of the Russian legal profession, and they were the basis of the legal training of the late-imperial Russian jurists. The Fundamental Laws were also the model for the first post-Soviet Russian constitution, the 1993 Russian Federation Constitution, which is, in form, a written constitution that grants extensive civil liberties while preserving the presidential authority of the head of state (Riasanovsky, A History of Russia, 5th ed., 1993).