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The police learned of the plan, and when at last, on November 17th, the conference was held at Viborg, eight miles from Petrograd as the national capital was now called a detachment of police found eleven persons assembled, including five members of the Imperial Duma, Messrs. Petrovsky, Badavev, Mouranov, Samoelov, and Chagov.
He added with a sneer: 'These gentlemen of the P.P.P. and the P.P.N. and the P.P.D. are all good Poles. 'Good Poles! echoed David no less bitterly. 'And the Poles voted en bloc to keep every Jewish candidate out of the Duma. 'Even so we must be better Poles than they, sublimely replied the member of the P.P.P. 'We are joining even the Clerical Parties of the Right for the good of our country.
Consequently, invoking the benediction of our Lord, I urge all citizens of Russia to submit to the Provisional Government, established upon the initiative of the Duma and invested with full plenary powers, until such time which will follow with as little delay as possible, as the Constituent Assembly, on a basis of universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage, shall, by its decision as to the new form of government, express the will of the people.
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.
The Czar and Czarina drove through the city amid the ringing of bells, and with banners flying." On reading this item the American reader plucks up heart. If, during the Chicago convention, the police had made three thousand arrests the sessions might have been as quiet as those of the Duma.
And indeed his lazy easy-goingness loathed argument of this domestic sort, loathed scenes, loathed doing anything disagreeable that could be put off. But here was Lady Dunstable's letter: Dear Mr. Arthur, Will your wife forgive me if I ask you to come to a tiny men's dinner-party next Friday at 8.15 to meet the President of the Duma, and another Russian, an intimate friend of Tolstoy's?
The abdication of the Czar had already produced the second phase of the Revolution the beginning of the struggle between the Provisional Government and the Council of Workmen and Soldiers' Deputies, and this was proceeding, for the moment, inside the walls of the Duma rather than in the streets and squares of the town.
As the workmen and soldiers of Petrograd were completely out of hand, armed and fighting on the streets, arresting officers, ministers and police, and showing a tendency to start general and anarchic pillaging, the Duma leaders saw a restraining authority in the Council of these same workmen and soldiers.
For seventy-two days the Duma worked and fought, seventy-two days of parliamentary history for which there is no parallel in the annals of parliamentary government. For the sake of the larger aims before it, the Duma carried out the demands of the government that it approve certain petty measures placed before it for the formality of its approval.
It demanded full political freedom; amnesty for all who had been imprisoned for political reasons or for violations of laws in restriction of religious liberty; the abolition of martial law and other extraordinary measures; abolition of capital punishment; the abolition of the Imperial Council and democratization of the laws governing elections to the Duma; autonomy for Finland and Poland; the expropriation of state and private lands in the interest of the peasants; a comprehensive body of social legislation designed to protect the industrial workers.
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