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This was, in the jargon of the Russian left, a ‘bourgeois’ reform, sponsored and supervised by the state, but with powerful implications for a Russian future where social position would derive from capital and labour, not from the status ascribed by birth. It was, in a sense, the belated fulfilment of the original promise of 1861, a promise that the government had feared to fulfil lest disruption of the communal structure foster proletarianization, unrest, even rebellion. But now that serious unrest and rebellion had been taking place even in the presence of the communal order, a major rationale for the status quo had been eliminated, at least in the eyes of many conservatives.

Who, then, was left to support the ‘anachronistic’ commune? A surprisingly broad range of groups, from the PSR on the left to anti-individualist conservatives on the right. Almost every political programme that called for confiscation of gentry lands, whether with or without compensation, entailed the transfer of those lands to village communes (or to larger townships consisting of communes), not to individual peasants. Even liberals who looked forward to a system of individual proprietorship saw this as the result of a natural evolutionary process, not aggressive state measures (though it should be noted that the Stolypin programme was based, in part, on voluntary compliance). Peasants themselves were no doubt torn, but to the extent that they were represented in the first two Dumas by the new ‘Trudovik’ (Labour) Party and by large numbers of peasant and peasant-oriented independents, they often resisted both the spirit and the letter of Stolypin’s master plan.

It was this resistance—dramatized by the failure of the government’s efforts to seek collaboration with some Kadets and other moderates—that impelled Stolypin to carry out his ‘coup’, that is, to dissolve the Second Duma (more radical than the First) and revise the electoral law to ensure a more conservative composition. Peasants had once been the regime’s golden hope; but having demonstrated that, be they monarchist or otherwise, they could not be relied on to vote with the government, they were now deprived of much of their electoral weight. The same fate befell the rebellious minorities. The landed gentry, who were never fully trusted by the state, but who now exhibited signs of disillusionment with the Kadets (for example, by routing Kadet candidates in zemstvo elections) and a greater readiness to rally to their tsar, gained vastly disproportionate electoral rights. The change in franchise redounded to the benefit of the Octobrists and parties to their right. The new law was complex, but the result was a ‘loyal’ Duma, with moderate Octobrists (fortified by the adherence of many industrialists) and conservative Nationalists providing Stolypin with a safe majority, at least for the moment. Kadets were now reduced in number, subdued in spirit, and internally divided; SDs and SRs, though fielding candidates, elected too few delegates to give them an effective voice.

The Period of the Third Duma: 1907–1912

Despite strict limitations on its competence (military matters as such were excluded), serious policy issues were discussed in the halls of the Third Duma (1907–12), the only one to survive for its full five-year term (the Fourth came close). But some of these issues led to serious conflict, demonstrating the fragility of the government’s relationship with even a conservative Duma. Three particularly controversial issues were: (1) control over budgetary matters, especially the debate over the naval budget in 1909, which raised the issue of the Duma’s competence more than issues of substance (though the navy’s desire to sponge up resources badly needed by the army was a perennial source of strife); (2) the so-called Western zemstvo crisis of 1911, where the Council of State sought, successfully at first, to thwart Stolypin’s plan, which was to extend elected zemstvos to six Western border provinces, but without enhancing the power of Polish Catholic noble landowners; (3) Stolypin’s and the Duma’s long efforts, also thwarted by the State Council, to extend the zemstvos to the lower township (volost′) level. Without engaging the complex details of these divisive issues, suffice it to say that each revealed the lack of a clear consensus that could unite the upper and lower houses with each other or with Stolypin’s cabinet (itself very divided), or any of these institutions with the tsar, given the strange vagaries of mood at the imperial court. At the same time, it must be granted that agreement was possible on some important matters, including the agrarian reform and (during the Fourth Duma) a progressive workers’ insurance law, partially modelled on the programmes of Bismarck.