From the first the attitude of the government toward the new Duma was one of contemptuous arrogance. "The Czar's Hangman," Stolypin, lectured the members as though they were naughty children, forbidding them to invite experts to aid them in framing measures, or to communicate with any of the zemstvos or municipal councils upon any questions whatsoever. "The Duma was not granted the right to express disapproval, reproach, or mistrust of the government," he thundered. To the Duma there was left about as much real power as is enjoyed by the "governments" of our "juvenile republics."
As a natural consequence of these things, the Second Duma paid less attention to legislation than the First Duma had done, and gave its time largely to interpellations and protests. Partly because of the absence of some of the most able leaders they had had in the First Duma, and partly to the aggressive radicalism of the Socialists, which they could only half-heartedly approve at best, the Constitutional Democrats were less influential than in the former parliament. They occupied a middle ground—always a difficult position. The real fight was between the Socialists and the reactionaries, supporters of the government. Among the latter were perhaps a score of members belonging to the Black Hundreds, constituting the extreme right wing of the reactionary group. Between these and the Socialists of the extreme left the assembly was kept at fever pitch. The Black Hundreds, for the most part, indulged in violent tirades of abuse, often in the most disgusting profanity. The Socialists replied with proletarian passion and vigor, and riotous scenes were common. The Second Duma was hardly a deliberative assembly!
On June 1st Stolypin threw a bombshell into the Duma by accusing the Social Democrats of having conspired to form a military plot for the overthrow of the government of Nicholas II. Evidence to this effect had been furnished to the Police Department by the spy and provocative agent, Azev. Of course there was no secret about the fact that the Social Democrats were always trying to bring about revolt in the army and the navy. They had openly proclaimed this, time and again. In the appeal issued at the time of the dissolution of the First Duma they had called upon the army and navy to rise in armed revolt. But the betrayal of their plans was a matter of some consequence. Azev himself had been loudest and most persistent in urging the work on. Stolypin demanded that all the Social Democrats be excluded permanently from the Duma and that sixteen of them be handed over to the government for imprisonment. The demand was a challenge to the whole Duma, since it called into question the right of the Duma to determine its own membership. Obviously, if members of parliament are to be dismissed whenever an autocratic government orders it, there is an end of parliamentary government. The demand created a tremendous sensation and gave rise to a long and exciting debate. Before it was ended, however, Nicholas II ordered the Duma dissolved. On June 3d the Second Duma met the fate of its predecessor, having lasted one hundred days.
IV
As on the former occasion, arrangements were at once begun to bring about the election of another and more subservient Duma. It is significant that throughout Nicholas II and his Cabinet recognized the imperative necessity of maintaining the institution in form. They dared not abolish it, greatly as they would have liked to do so. On the day that the Duma was dissolved the Czar, asserting his divine right to enact and repeal laws at will, disregarding again the solemn assurances of the October Manifesto, by edict changed the electoral laws, consulting neither the Duma nor the Imperial Council. This new law greatly decreased the representation of the city workers and the peasants in the Duma and correspondingly increased the representation of the rich landowners and capitalists. A docile and "loyal" Duma was thus made certain, and no one was very much surprised when the elections, held in September, resulted in an immense reactionary majority. When the Third Duma met on December 14, 1907, the reactionaries were as strong as the Socialist and Labor groups had been in the previous Duma, and of the reactionaries the group of members of the Black Hundreds was a majority.
In the mean time there had been the familiar rule of brutal reaction. Most of the Social Democratic members of the Second Duma were arrested and condemned for high treason, being sent to prison and to Siberia. New laws and regulations restricting the press were proclaimed and enforced with increasing severity. By comparison with the next two years, the period from 1905 to 1907 was a period of freedom. After the election of the Third Duma the bureaucracy grew ever bolder. Books and leaflets which had been circulated openly and with perfect freedom during 1905 and 1906 were forbidden, and, moreover, their authors were arrested and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. While the law still granted freedom of assemblage and the right to organize meetings, these rights did not exist as realities. Everywhere the Black Hundreds held sway, patronized by the Czar, who wore their emblem and refused to permit the punishment of any of their members, even though they might be found guilty by the courts.
It is not necessary to dwell upon the work of the Third Duma. This is not a history of Russia, and a detailed study of the servile parliament of Nicholas II and Stolypin would take us too far afield from our special study—the revolutionary movement. Suffice it, therefore, to say that some very useful legislation, necessary to the economic development of Russia, was enacted, and that, despite the overwhelming preponderance of reactionaries, it was not an absolutely docile body. On several occasions the Third Duma exercised the right of criticism quite vigorously, and on two or three occasions acted in more or less open defiance of the wishes of the government. A notable instance of this was the legislation of 1909, considerably extending freedom of religious organization and worship, which was, however, greatly curtailed later by the Imperial Council—and then nullified by the government.
The period 1906-14 was full of despair for sensitive and aspiring souls. The steady and rapid rise in the suicide-rate bore grim and eloquent testimony to the character of those years of dark repression. The number of suicides in St. Petersburg increased during the period 1905-08 more than 400 per cent.; in Moscow about 800 per cent.! In the latter city two-fifths of the suicides in 1908 were of persons less than twenty years old! And yet, withal, there was room for hope, the soul of progress was not dead. In various directions there was a hopeful and promising growth. First among these hopeful and promising facts was the marvelous growth of the Consumers' Co-operatives. After 1905 began the astonishing increase in the number of these important organizations, which continued, year after year, right up to the Revolution of 1917. In 1905 there were 4,479 such co-operatives in Russia; in 1911 there were 19,253. Another hopeful sign was the steadily increasing literacy of the masses. Statistics upon this point are almost worthless. Russian official statistics are notoriously defective and the figures relating to literacy are peculiarly so, but the leaders of Russian Socialism have attested to the fact. In this connection it is worthy of note that, according to the most authentic official records, the number of persons subscribing to the public press grew in a single year, from 1908 to 1909, fully 25 per cent. Education and organization were going on, hand in hand.
Nor was agitation dead. In the Duma the Socialist and Labor parties and groups, knowing that they had no chance to enact their program, made the Duma a rostrum from which to address the masses throughout the nation. Sometimes, indeed, the newspapers were forbidden to print their speeches, but as a rule they were published, at least by the liberal papers, and so disseminated among the masses. In these speeches the Social Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Laborites, and more daring of the Constitutional Democrats mercilessly exposed the bureaucracy, so keeping the fires of discontent alive.