What Was the State Duma?
On 27 April 1906, in the Tauride Palace in St Petersburg, the deputies of the First State Duma of the Russian Empire gathered for the opening of the first Russian parliament. The 499 deputies — 47 per cent of them from the peasantry, another 18 per cent from the professional classes, 26 per cent from the nobility, and 4 per cent from the clergy — were led by Sergei Muromtsev, a law professor and the chairman of the Constitutional Democratic Party, who opened the session with a speech invoking the spirit of 1789. Within a few days, however, the fundamental tension of the Duma project was on display: the deputies were talking about land reform, civil liberties, and ministerial responsibility; the Tsar and his ministers were talking about the new assembly’s strictly consultative role. The Duma was dissolved by imperial decree on 21 July 1906, after 73 days in session (see Ascher, The Revolution of 1905, 2004; Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1990).
The establishment of the Duma
The Duma was the product of the October Manifesto of 17 October 1905, which Nicholas II had signed under the pressure of the general strike. The first elections were held in the spring of 1906 under a Statute of 5 August 1905 and a Statute of 11 December 1905; the second set of regulations was the Electoral Law of the Fundamental Laws of 1906. The electoral system was complex, indirect, and weighted toward the propertied classes: the peasantry had a separate electoral college, the urban population was divided into three curiae (large, medium, small property), and the nobility and clergy had additional representation in the special landowner’s curia. Of about 50 million adult males, only about 3.6 million had the right to vote in the 1906 elections.
The Duma sat for 4-5 years; the State Council, the upper house, sat for 9. Both chambers had to approve legislation, but the Tsar retained the right to veto (the suspensive veto was in the Fundamental Laws of 1906), to dissolve the lower house, to rule by emergency decree (Article 87 of the Fundamental Laws), and to make war and peace. The Tsar also retained the right to appoint and dismiss ministers (Pipes, 1990).
The four Dumas
The First Duma (27 April - 21 July 1906) was dominated by the Constitutional Democrats, who had won about 44 per cent of the vote and 34 per cent of the seats. The First Duma passed 100-odd pieces of legislation, most of which were vetoed by the Tsar; the most important was the Address to the Tsar, an answer to the Speech from the Throne in which the deputies asked for land reform, universal suffrage, and a responsible ministry. The First Duma was dissolved on 21 July 1906, and about 180 deputies signed the Vyborg Manifesto urging passive resistance (the response was minimal).
The Second Duma (20 February - 3 June 1907) was more radical: the Social Democrats had 65 deputies, the Socialist Revolutionaries had 37, and the Trudoviks (a peasant party) had 94. The Second Duma was dissolved in June 1907 in what is sometimes called the “Stolypin coup,” and the new electoral law of 3 June 1907 substantially reduced the representation of the peasantry, the workers, and the non-Russian nationalities.
The Third Duma (1 November 1907 - 9 June 1912) was more conservative. The Constitutional Democrats had 53 deputies, the Octobrists (the moderate constitutionalist party that had supported the 3 June coup) had 154, the Right had 153. The Third Duma served its full term, passed about 2000 pieces of legislation, and adopted the most important pieces of the Stolypin agrarian reform.
The Fourth Duma (15 November 1912 - 6 October 1917) was the longest-lived: it sat through the First World War, the February Revolution, and the early months of the Provisional Government. The Progressive Bloc, formed in August 1915, was the largest political force in the Fourth Duma. The Fourth Duma was dissolved by the Provisional Government on 6 October 1917, only three weeks before the Bolsheviks seized power (Ascher, 2004).
The Duma and the revolution of February 1917
On 27 February 1917 (12 March by the Western calendar), with the Petrograd garrison in mutiny, the deputies of the Fourth Duma established the Provisional Committee of the Duma under Mikhail Rodzianko. The Committee appointed the Provisional Government under Prince Georgy Lvov, and the deputies voted to recognise the Petrograd Soviet that the workers and soldiers had set up in parallel. The Duma’s committee, in effect, became the nucleus of the new Russian government. Nicholas II abdicated in favour of the Provisional Government on 2 March 1917 (Pipes, 1990).
The Duma and 1917
The Duma was dissolved on 6 October 1917 by the Provisional Government as part of the preparations for the elections to the Constituent Assembly, but the elections were the same day the Bolsheviks seized power, and the Constituent Assembly itself was dissolved by the Bolsheviks in January 1918. The State Duma of the Russian Federation, established by the 1993 Constitution, is the modern successor of the imperial Duma; the lower house of the Russian parliament has been known as the State Duma ever since.