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First Duma 1906

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by FantineB (U2968339) on Sunday, 15th January 2006

  I need help on the significance of the First Duma of April 1906, i understand the fact that it helped ease tension between the Tsar and his people but I'm not completely sure i understand how it effected the country period. Help?!

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• Message 2

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  Posted by Kid_A (U2618060) on Sunday, 15th January 2006

  Basically, i didn't!
  
  they held little to no power, and i think the Tsar ended up getting rid of it anyway...
  
  but dont quote me...

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  Posted by henrylee100 (U536041) on Monday, 16th January 2006

  Russia was in a state of wide spred civil unrest in 1906. It started in the winter of 1905 when toops opened fire at a peaceful demonstration on Palace Square in Saint Petersberg, which was then followed kosaks hunting people down like animals all over the city and puttig them to the sword, the total number of civilian casualties was estimated at over 2500 people dead. That was the Russian bloody sunday. Then came the humiliating rout at Tsusima in the summer and a chain reaction began, with pheasant uprisings, strikes, civil disobedience. In this situation the tsar and his clique decided they had to give something to the people, a show of democracy to some such thing so in 1906 they got a duma elected which passed a constitution adn the tsar signed it. So basically this first duma was part of an attempt by the tsarist regime to pacify the public, ultimately the attempt can be said to have fallen thru at that time because the unrest contiued to rage for another year and eventually was put down by the more traditional methods (executions and torture)

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  Posted by Eliza6Beth (U2637732) on Monday, 16th January 2006

  In addition, I think one of the key problems was that although the Duma was quite fairly elected (roughly speaking!), it didn't actualliy ahve any effective power. It was just a talking shop, and 'advisory board'. Real power stayed with the Tsar. Thus it was mainly cosmetic, except that it (a) gave people the 'taste' of constitutional parliamentary democracy but also (b) frustrated them because it was too little too late etc.
  
  If the Tsar had gradually increased its powers, it might have served to avert the full revolution a decade later. Who knows, a sufficiently powerful Duma might also have voted agasint the folly of going to war in l914.
  
  It's intersting to look at Germany in this period. I was always taugth that although the Reichstag was elected on a very wide, possibly male universal, can't rememeber!, franchise, its actual power was very very limited. It could vote on things all it liked, but the Kaiser and his chums did what they wanted. It was all show and no trousers. Again, had a united Germany made a real transition to constitutional democracy, it might not have gone to war in l914.
  
  Course, both France and the UK WERE constitutional democracies, and they both voted for war as well. Though in France, at least, there was, I think, a very significant anti-war party under the socialists (can't remember hte guy's name: Jurras? Help please!). Germany also had a strong socialist anti-war party, but as the Reichstag had no power, neitehr did they, constitutionally.
  
  But in Russia the l905 revolution was a missed opportunity. Only with hindsight could one see that though. (as usual!)
  
  Eliza.
  
  

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  Posted by OUNUPA (U2078829) on Tuesday, 17th January 2006

  Thanks Lady for your interesting thoughts.
  Yes,there was nothing the Duma could do,for example,to prevent the gov from subsidizing Rightist papers and organizations ,which were known to incite pogroms and which even tried to assassinate prominent liberal Duma leaders..The Ministry of Interior and the police ,both of which retained close ties with the court ,were quite beyond the Duma's control.
  

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  Posted by OUNUPA (U2078829) on Tuesday, 17th January 2006

  Henry,that Russian Pop(Father) Gapon who led those people on that Sunday morning 9 January 1905 to the Palace square in St.Petersburg was an Zubatov's agent-Chief of the Moscow Okhrana,who since 1900 had been orginizing his own police-sponsored organizations with the blessing of the Grand Duke Sergei,Governor-General of Moscow.Zubatov himself began his career as a schoolboy terrorist in the Populist underground,but soon became turned police informer.The rest of his life was devoted to the Okhrana.

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