election, through a series of electoral colleges. It was a simple matter to manipulate these so as to throw the effective power into the hands of the propertied classes without ostensibly The third Duma. depriving any one of the vote.[1] The result was that in the third Duma, which met on the 15th of November 1907, the conservative Right preponderated as much as the Left had done in its two predecessors. Its president, M. Khomiakov, had been one of the founders of the “Union of 17 October,” but even the Octobrists formed but a third of the House and were compelled to act with the reactionaries of the Right; and the vice-president, Prince Volkonsky, was a member of the Union of the Russian People.
On the whole, the new Duma was fairly representative of the changed temper of the Russian people, disillusioned and weary of anarchy. The government had done wisely in obscuring the passion for democratic ideals by an appeal to Russian chauvinism, an appeal soon to bear fruit in disuniting the revolutionary parties. The congress of zemstvos, hitherto the focus of Liberalism, had petitioned the government, before the opening of the third Duma, to take measures for the restoration of order. The authorities began to exhibit something of their old spirit. M. Dubrovin, president of the Union of the Russian People and organizer of pogroms, having written a letter of congratulation to the tsar on the occasion of the coup d'état, received a gracious reply; the hideous reign of terror of the “Black Hundred” in Odessa did not prevent the Grand-duke Constantine from accepting the badge of membership of the Union. The ordinary laws, too, had been suspended; the lining and confiscation of newspapers had been resumed, and the “Cadets” had been forbidden to hold a congress. All this, however, did not argue an intention on the part of the government to revert to the autocratic status quo. M. Stolypin indeed defended the coup d'état in the Duma on the ground that the autocrat had merely altered what the autocrat had originally granted; but, while laying stress on the necessity for restoring order in the body politic, he announced a long programme of reforms, including agrarian measures, reform of local government and its extension in the frontier provinces, and state insurance of workmen. The most far-reaching of these reforms, carried in the first session of the third Duma, was the partial abolition of the communal and family ownership of land, which involved the establishment of a class of true peasant-proprietors.[2] Besides this, the Duma had passed before its adjournment on the 28th of October 1908 much useful legislation, some 300 bills in all, including two for the building of important railways on the Amur and in Siberia. Nor had it exhibited by any means a wholly docile spirit. On the 7th of June, for instance, M. Guchkov attacked the maladministration in the navy, pointing out that no reforms were possible so long as grand-dukes were at the head of its departments. The Duma endorsed this all but unanimously, and as the result the Grand-dukes Peter and Sergius resigned their posts of inspector-general of Engineers and Ordnance respectively, and the Grand-duke Nicholas his chairmanship of the Committee of National Defence. A year later the Duma again came into collision with the government in a matter highly illuminating of the struggle between the ancient traditions and the new ideas in Russia. On the 14th of June 1909 a bill was passed removing the disabilities hitherto attaching to some 15,000,000 of Old Believers. In spite of strenuous government opposition, inspired by the authorities of the Orthodox Church, amendments were carried allowing dissident ministers to assume ecclesiastical titles and to preach, and permitting Christians to join non-Christian religions or even to describe themselves as unbelievers. Thus a step forward was made in securing the freedom of conscience proclaimed in the October manifesto and denounced by a synod of Orthodox bishops at Kiev in 1908, though the rights granted by the Duma were seriously curtailed in the Imperial Council, and have been largely rendered a dead letter by the action of the administration.
Meanwhile the pan-Russian movement had been gaining apace. At first it had seemed that the new birth of Russia Neo-Slav and pan-Russian movements. would lead to a revival of pan-Slavism, directed not, as in the middle of the 19th century, against Austria but against Germany. In May 1908 a deputation of Russian the Slav members of the Austrian Reichsrat paid a ceremonial visit to the Duma at St Petersburg, and in this “neo-Slav” demonstration M. Dmowski, leader of the Polish party in the Duma, took part. In the following year, however, the situation was completely altered, a result due to the growing anti-Polish feeling in the Duma and, more especially, to the support given by the Austrian Slavs to the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This event caused the utmost excitement in Russia; the crown prince of Servia, who arrived in St Petersburg on the 28th of October to ask for the armed assistance of the tsar, was received with enthusiasm by all classes of the people; and, though armed intervention was impossible, M. Isvolsky took the lead in the abortive demand for a European conference (see Europe: History). Neo-Slav dreams were now replaced by a passionate desire to consolidate the Russian empire on a purely Russian basis. Even the remnant of the “Cadets” had by this time renounced their sympathy with Polish aspirations, and in the matter of Finland the Duma proved itself even more imperial than the emperor himself. The Finnish question is dealt with elsewhere (see Finland: History). Here it may suffice to mention, as illustrating the The Duma and Finland. changed temper of the Russian national assembly, that the Russian majority of the Duma included among the imperial questions in Finland which the Finnish diet ought to refer to the imperial legislature not only all military matters—as the tsar demanded (Rescript of October 14)—but the question of the use of the Russian language in the grand-duchy, the principles of the Finnish administration, police, justice, education, formation of business companies and of associations, public meetings, the press, the customs tariff, the monetary system, means of communication, and the pilot and lighthouse system. The old tendency illustrated by the outcome of the revolutionary movements of 1848 was once more in evidence—the tendency of merely artificial theories of democratic liberty to succumb to the immemorial instinct of race and race ascendancy.
As an international force Russia had been, of course, all but completely crippled by the outcome of the Japanese War and International position of Russia. the subsequent revolution. Her recovery, however, revealed the immense reserves of her strength. On the 30th of July 1907 she signed a convention with Japan of mutual respect for treaty and territorial rights, and guaranteeing the integrity of China. On the 31st of August of the same year the long period of mutual suspicion between Great Britain and Russia was closed by a convention for an amicable settlement of all questions likely to disturb the relations of the two Powers in Asia generally, including the demarcation of Persia into spheres of influence (see Persia: History). This new entente with Great Britain, cemented by a visit paid by King Edward VII. to the tsar at Reval on the 9th June 1908, helped to knit close once more the loosened alliance with France, and so to preserve the threatened balance of Europe. That in the work of restoring its military position the Russian government had the support of the Russian parliament was proved by a subsidy of £11,000,000 voted by the Duma, on the 30th of December 1909, for the special service of the reorganization and redistribution of the army. (W. A. P.)
Bibliography.—The history of Russia, especially that of the last few years, has formed the subject of a vast number of works, of very varying authority, in many languages. In Russia itself the first great history of the Russian empire was that of N. M. Karamzin (12 vols., St Petersburg, 1818-29; French translation, 11 vols., 1819-26), which, though reactionary in tone and largely superseded, remains a classic. The next monumental history of Russia, that of Sergei Mikhailovich Soloviev (29 vols., Moscow, 1863-75), marks the enormous advance made since Karamzin's day in historical method and research. Soloviev's history, from the earliest times to 1774, is based throughout on original investigation of sources, an therefore, though inferior to Karamzin's work as
