The first patriotic impulse quickly faded away, and the thirst for power, which seized too many Duma members, eventually led to the fact that the Duma turned out to be the most dangerous tribune for the central government. It was from her that the verdict of the Russian Empire was actually sounded.
And it was the Duma leaders, Guchkov and Shulgin, who gave the Abdication Act to the emperor for signature. The State Duma of the Russian Empire of the IV convocation, headed by M. V. Rodzianko, having no special real powers either at the front or in the rear, it was by no means accidental that he made the way from the "support of the tsarist power" to its gravedigger.
But it should be recalled that from the first steps of the creation of the Russian State Duma, it was thought of as a kind of legislative and consultative organization that has little in common with European parliaments. Its establishment was given an impetus by a broad social movement in Russia, which developed after the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, which exposed the failures of the bureaucratic administration of the country.
Emperor Nicholas II, trying to calm the people, in a rescript dated February 18, 1905, promised "from now on to attract the most worthy, endowed people, elected from the population, to participate in the preliminary development and discussion of legislative assumptions." Soon, on August 6, the Ministry of Internal Affairs drew up the "Statute on the State Duma", which gave it very narrow rights, moreover, the Duma had to be elected by a limited circle of people, mainly large owners, as well as, on special grounds, people from the peasant class …
In response, a wave of discontent swept across the country against the distortion of the expected reform of the state system, and after that, in October 1905, there were massive strikes of railway workers in European Russia and Siberia, workers in factories and plants, banks and even government officials.
Under such powerful pressure, the authorities were forced to issue a manifesto of October 17, which determined the foundations of the constitutional reform of Russia and, in its development, additional rules on elections appeared, which lowered the property qualification and provided voting rights to officials and workers. The rights of the Duma were expanded, but not for long.
On February 20, 1906, the State Council of the country was transformed into the upper legislative chamber, to which some of the most pressing problems were transferred, literally torn from the hands of the Duma. Limited in its powers, it took all measures to expand them, to become the highest legislative body in Russia.
Hence the often arising disputes and contradictions with the State Council, the government and even with the emperor himself, who was accused of dictatorship. Such a critical position would be understandable for the opposition, even moderate ones, like the Cadets, but it, among other things, pushed for the abdication of Nicholas II from the throne. However, the last tsar was pushed to this by his closest entourage, starting with the highest generals and ending with close relatives.
The Duma of the IV convocation, "military", had a pronounced "flank character", where the "right" fiercely opposed the "left" with a very moderate center. And this despite the fact that on the whole the IV Duma turned out to be more reactionary than all the previous ones: the "right" and nationalists received 186 seats in it, the Octobrists - 100, the Cadets and progressists - 107.
The program of action outlined by the right-wing parties during the Great War actually supplemented the official government declarations. It pursued the goal of "fulfilling the age-old dream" - to free the Black Sea straits and Constantinople from the Turks, turning it into the Third Capital of the Russian Empire, to complete the unification under the emperor's scepter of the Slavic lands that were once part of Kievan Rus, but later "occupied" by aggressive neighbors.
At the same time, it was from the Duma rostrum that society was repeatedly made clear that Russia was facing a difficult task - not to allow the Allies to shift the main burdens of the war onto the shoulders of Russian soldiers, seeking equal participation of the Entente powers in hostilities. The Cadets, who, with the light hand of their leader Pavel Milyukov, took on the role of “opposition to His Majesty,” during the World War, advocated bourgeois democratic reforms and their consolidation in the Russian constitution.
Other "leftists", in particular, the very small number of Bolsheviks (there were only seven of them in that Russian parliament), openly called for the overthrow of the autocracy and broad representation in the Duma of workers and peasants … In fact, only they in the first and August days of 1914 refused to participate in numerous patriotic demonstrations and did not succumb to an attack of monarchical unity.
The outbreak of the First World War, which caused an unprecedented patriotic upsurge in Russian society, for some time united the opposing sides, but not for long, before the first major defeats of Russia at the front, and it was the war that eventually led to an acute crisis and Russian parliamentarism itself.
The first "military" meeting of the Duma was convened by decree of Emperor Nicholas II of July 26, 1914 and was designated in the Russian press as "historical". The Bolsheviks declared that they would fight against the bloody adventure launched by the governments of the European powers and put forward the slogan: "War to war!"
15 deputies from the Social Democracy (together with 8 Mensheviks), who did not find support in the ranks of the Trudoviks, argued that "the war will reveal to the peoples of Europe a real source of violence and oppression." The bourgeoisie called for the postponement of internal disputes between political parties and the government and to unite in the face of the coming disaster.
But the idyllic euphoria of the unification of "everyone and everything" was, we repeat, very short. The IV convocation of the State Duma, officially formed on November 15, 1912, began to work irregularly with the outbreak of the war. Let us recall only the most significant of the wartime Duma meetings.
July 26, 1914 - an emergency one-day session dedicated to the allocation of war credits, on the very threshold of the outbreak of war. The State Duma has almost complete unity with the authorities. The most leftists don't count.
The third session was from 27 to 29 January 1915, the purpose of which was the adoption of the budget. Just about on the agenda will be shell hunger, but the budget was adopted, and immediately the emperor announced the meeting of the Duma closed.
The drift of parliamentarians towards confrontation with tsarism is not even outlined yet. Although very soon they will allow themselves the previously unthinkable - it is from the Duma that a real PR campaign will be organized against the change of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.
Is it any wonder that subsequently the fourth and fifth sessions of the IV Duma, which took place from July 19 to September 3, 1915 and from December 1 to 16, 1916, were also dissolved ahead of schedule by Nicholas II. By the time of the fourth session, the Duma members were already drifting towards open confrontation with the tsar, and with the government they were simply “at war”.
And the December dissolution of 1916 only increased the already ripe general political tension in Russia before the February Revolution. But on February 14, in the midst of revolutionary events, the emperor unexpectedly announced the continuation of the work of this legislative branch of government and on February 25 just as unexpectedly interrupted it …
After that, the State Duma of the IV convocation of official meetings no longer held. However, to the credit of the Russian parliamentarians, they did not sit in comfortable palace chairs, and since the beginning of the war they did not disdain to travel to the front to see firsthand the state of affairs on the front line.
The head of the Duma M. V. was no exception. Rodzianko, who initiated the convocation of the Special Defense Conference. The special meeting was later supplemented by the notorious military-industrial committees, which, no longer hesitating, pulled up all the levers of power on the ground.
Chairman of the IV State Duma M. V. Rodzianko with the deputy (deputy chairman) and the Duma bailiffs
As you know, the rear departments prepared for the beginning of the war a stock of shells, designed for only six months. Blitzkrieg ideas were not alien to anyone then, this time seemed quite enough for many to reach Berlin.
But after several major battles, the shells ran out. New batches of them were produced in insufficient quantities. Hundreds of Russian soldiers died in the trenches under a hail of German shells fired from heavy guns, and could only respond with rare light artillery fire.
At a special meeting in the summer of 1915, the Artillery Department announced that the production of shells could not be increased because there were no pipe-making machines. The delegates of the Fourth Duma took matters into their own hands. We went around the country and found thousands of machine tools suitable for production, adapted textile and other factories for military orders … They even found in the Petrograd arsenal one and a half million old-style remote tubes, which were easily adapted for shelling.
The Russian army fought not only unarmed, but naked and barefoot. The Duma even had to deal with such mundane business as the supply of boots. M. V. Rodzianko proposed to involve zemstvos and public organizations in the work and to convene a congress of chairmen of provincial zemstvo councils. But the government saw this as an attempt to consolidate the revolutionary forces. And they truly saw it!
“According to my intelligence information, under the guise of a congress for the needs of the army, they will discuss the political situation in the country and demand a constitution,” M. V. Rodzianko Minister of Internal Affairs Maklakov. The parliament reacted unequivocally. “Even in such a simple matter, the government put a spoke in the wheel for the deputies. The actions of the cabinet of ministers resembled clear sabotage and even betrayal,”the Cadet Rech (issue of March 15, 1917) wrote later. So, the Duma seems to have made its revolutionary choice.
The end follows …
