Unknown facts about the State Duma of the Russian Empire available in the Presidential Library’s collections

A major event in the social and political life of the Russian Empire, the Manifesto On the Establishment of the State Duma in Russia, signed by Emperor Nicholas II, took place on August 6 (19 - according to the new style). On the same day, the Statute on the Elections to the State Duma was published.

According to the manifesto, the Duma was established as "a legislative advisory institution, which is provided with the preliminary development and discussion of legislative assumptions and consideration of the list of state revenues and expenditures". By the way, this project of the State Duma, which received the name "Bulyginskaya", was adopted on the birthday of its creator, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire Alexander Bulygin - on August 6, 1905 he turned 54 years old.

The convocation of the Bulyginskaya Duma was disrupted as a result of the revolutionary events in October 1905, which forced the Russian emperor to agree to a significant expansion of the powers of the State Duma. Published on October 17, 1905, the Manifesto On the Improvement of State Order" gave "the population the unshakable foundations of civil freedom" and established "as an unshakable rule that no law can take force without the approval of the State Duma".

Elections to the Duma passed through the election of electors according to the curia (categories of voters, formed by dividing them into groups according to class, property) - landowning, urban, peasant and workers. The book of the lawyer Bernard Ketritz The First State Duma features a report "The State Duma in figures", according to which, on June 15, 1906, it included "landowners ... 65 people, 111 farmers, 24 merchants, 61 servants of zemstvos and cities, 10 professors, 4 privat-docents, 23 teachers, 38 lawyers, 19 doctors, 14 priests. " The majority of the deputies were representatives of the Constitutional Democratic Party (Cadets).

The simultaneous opening of the State Council and the State Duma took place on April 27, 1906 in St. Petersburg, in the St. George Throne Hall of the Winter Palace. This 115-year-old historical event is available on the Presidential Library's portal thanks to the rare newsreel footage, recreated and digitized by Russian specialists.

“The speech from the throne was greeted with a thunderous “hurray”, -  wrote journalist and lawyer Sergei Varshavsky in his book Life and Works of the First State Duma (1907). - <…> After leaving the hall by the Highest Persons, everyone hurried to the exit and the golden uniforms merged with the peasant Armenians, - the old Russia merged with the new into one stream".

From the very first days, the deputies launched a vigorous activity. In response to the speech from the throne, an address was adopted demanding an amnesty for political prisoners, political freedoms, a solution to the land issue, etc. But, according to the publicist Mikhail Mogilyansk in his book The First State Duma, “to the persistent, energetic and decisive demand of the people - „land and freedom!", the government replied - "no land, no freedom". In a little over two months of work, the Duma accepted about 400 requests containing criticism of the government's actions. The deputies were accused of "polyphony and abusive treatment of ministers." Bernard Ketritz justified this by the fact that "... the Duma saw at every step what fruitless work it was doomed, and in what narrow framework it was placed ...". “Let the Duma be accused of anything, but not that it didn’t want to work for the good of the tortured country, that “it didn’t do anything””, - Varshavsky wrote in his turn.

On the morning of July 9, 1906, the deputies who came to the meeting found the Tavrichesky Palace under military protection, and the doors were locked. And although the first State Duma lasted only 72 days, these were the days that opened a new page in the history of Russia. Of the four convocations of the Duma, two were dissolved by the tsarist government, but in spite of everything, it existed until the fall of the autocracy and even survived the collapse of the monarchy.

More details about the State Duma and its role in the history of Russian statehood is available in the large-scale collection posted on the Presidential Library’s portal. it includes research by historians, memoirs of deputies, transcripts of meetings, photographs, as well as the first and only documentary footage of the opening of the first meeting of the first State Duma of the Russian Federation Empire, donated to the Presidential Library by the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents.