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Updated: May 21, 2025
We know that it was proposed to have the workmen of Petrograd strike on February 27, the day of the opening of the Duma, as a protest against the government; we know also that to meet this situation, the Minister of the Interior had placed machine guns in the garrets, in steeples, on housetops, and other such places where they could command the important streets and shoot down the mob.
The Tsar at the same time declared his immutable purpose to maintain the institution of Parliament, and named March 5, 1907, as the date of the convening of a new Duma.
They were only saying, in very moderate language, what millions were thinking; what, a few months later, many of the liberal spokesmen of the country were ready to say in harsher language. As early as January, 1915, the Duma met and cautiously expressed its alarm. In July it met again, many of the members coming directly from the front, in uniform.
The Grand Duke Nicholas was relieved of his command and sent to take over that in the Caucasus. He was succeeded by the Tsar himself, who was unlikely to interfere with the military measures of Alexeiev, his chief of staff; and the Duma seconded the Tsar's attempt to express the determination of the Russian peoples to withstand the Germans until victory was secured.
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.
Even the German Emperor after the election of 1907 spoke of himself rather as the successful leader of a popular electoral campaign than as the inheritor of a divine right. The vast majority of the Russian nation passionately desires a sovereign parliament, and a reactionary Duma finds itself steadily pushed by circumstances towards that position.
More than that: Finland then actually accomplished her revolution in the form of a democratic autonomy, and the Duma approved it.
Many of the educated classes and members of the Duma advocated a constitutional monarchy of the English type, while others, particularly the socialistic groups, favored a republic, a democratic republic; whatever they meant by that is not clear.
It was Skobelev who made the announcement to the crowd outside the Taurida Palace that the old system was ended forever and that the Duma would create a Provisional Committee. He begged the workers and the soldiers to keep order, to refrain from violence against individuals, and to observe strict discipline. "Freedom demands discipline and order," he said.
Shortly before the time came for the assembling of the newly elected Duma, the Czar's government announced new fundamental laws which limited the powers of the Duma and practically reduced it to a farce. In the first place, the Imperial Council was to be reconstituted and set over the Duma as an upper chamber, or Senate, having equal rights with the Duma.
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