Chapter XXVII: Appendix: B

THE REPLY TO THE CROWN SPEECH BY THE FIRST DUMA, 1906[24]

YOUR MAJESTY: In a speech addressed to the representatives of the people it pleased your Majesty to announce your resolution to keep unchanged the decree by which the people were assembled to carry out legislative functions in coöperation with their monarch. The State Duma sees in this solemn promise of the monarch to the people a lasting pledge for the strengthening and the further development of legislative procedure in strict conformity with constitutional principles. The State Duma, on its side, will direct all its efforts toward perfecting the principles of national representation and will present for your Majesty’s confirmation a law for national representation, based, in accordance with the manifest will of the people, upon principles of universal suffrage.

Your Majesty’s summons to us to coöperate in a work which shall be useful to the country finds an echo in the hearts of all the members of the State Duma. The State Duma, made up of representatives of all classes and all races inhabiting Russia, is united in a warm desire to regenerate Russia and to create within her a new order, based upon the peaceful coöperation of all classes and races, upon the firm foundation of civic liberty.

But the State Duma deems it its duty to declare that while present conditions exist, such reformation is impossible.

The country recognizes that the ulcer in our present régime is in the arbitrary power of officials who stand between the Czar and the people, and seized with a common impulse, the country has loudly declared that reformation is possible only upon the basis of freedom of action and the participation by the nation itself in the exercise of the legislative power and the control of the executive. In the manifesto of October 17, 1905, your Majesty was pleased to announce from the summit of the throne a firm determination to employ these very principles as the foundation for Russia’s future, and the entire nation hailed these good tidings with a universal cry of joy.

Yet the very first days of freedom were darkened by the heavy affliction into which the country was thrown by those who would bar the path leading to the Czar; those who by trampling down the very fundamental principles of the imperial manifesto of October 17, 1905, overwhelmed the land with the disgrace of organized massacres, military reprisals, and imprisonments without trial.

The impression of these recent administrative acts has been felt so keenly by the people that no pacification of the country is possible until the people are assured that henceforth arbitrary acts of officials shall cease, nor be longer shielded by the name of your Majesty; until all the ministers shall be held responsible to the representatives of the people, and that the administration in every step of state service shall be reformed accordingly.

Sire: The idea of completely freeing the monarch from responsibility can be implanted in the minds of the nation only by making the ministers responsible to the people. Only a ministry fully trusted by the majority of the Duma can establish confidence in the government; and only in the presence of such confidence is the peaceful and regular work of the State Duma possible. But above all it is most needful to free Russia from the operation of exceptional laws for so-called “special and extraordinary protection,” and “martial law,” under cover of which the arbitrary authority of irresponsible officials has grown up and still continues to grow.

Side by side with the establishment of the principle of responsibility of the administration to the representatives of the people, it is indispensable, for the successful work of the Duma, that there should be implanted, and definitely adopted, the fundamental principle of popular representation based on the coöperation of the monarch with the people, as the only source of legislative power. Therefore all barriers between the imperial power and the people must be removed. No branch of legislative power should ever be closed to the inspection of the representative of the people, in coöperation with the monarch. The State Duma considers it its duty to state to your Majesty, in the name of the people, that the whole nation, with true inspiration and energy, with genuine faith in the near prosperity of the country, will only then fulfil its work of reformation, when the Council of State, which stands between it and the throne, shall cease to be made up, even in part, of members who have been appointed instead of being elected; when the law of collecting taxes shall be subject to the will of the representatives of the people; and when there shall be no possibility, by any special enactment, of limiting the legislative jurisdiction of the representatives of the people. The State Duma also considers it inconsistent with the vital interests of the people that any bill imposing taxes, when once passed by the Duma, should be subject to amendment on the part of any body which is not representative of the mass of taxpayers.

In the domain of its future legislative activity, the State Duma, performing the duty definitely imposed upon it by the people, deems it necessary to provide the country, without delay, with a strict law providing for the inviolability of the person, freedom of conscience, liberty of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, convinced that without the strict observance of these principles, the foundation of which was laid in the manifesto of October 17, 1905, no social reform can be realized. The Duma also considers it necessary to secure for all citizens the right of petition to the people’s representatives. The State Duma has further the inflexible conviction that neither liberty nor order can be made firm and secure except on the broad foundation of equality before the law of all citizens without exception. Therefore the State Duma will establish a law for the perfect equality before the law of all citizens, abolishing all limitations dependent upon estate, nationality, religion, and sex. The Duma, however, while striving to free the country from the binding fetters of administrative guardianship and leaving the limitation of the liberty of the citizen to the independent judicial authorities, still deems the application of capital punishment, even in accordance with a legal sentence, as inadmissible. A death sentence should never be pronounced. The Duma holds that it has the right to proclaim, as the unanimous desire of the people, that a day should come when a law forever abolishing capital punishment here shall be established. In anticipation of that law the country to-day is looking to your Majesty for a suspension of all death sentences.

The investigation of the needs of the rural population and the undertaking of legislative measures to meet those wants will be considered among the first problems of the State Duma. The most numerous part of the population, the hard-working peasants, impatiently await the satisfaction of their acute want of land and the first Russian State Duma would be recreant to its duty were it to fail to establish a law to meet this primary want by resorting to the use of lands belonging to the state, the crown, the royal family, and monastic and church lands; also private landed property on the principle of the law of eminent domain.

The Duma also deems it necessary to create laws giving equality to the peasantry, removing the present degrading limitations which separate them from the rest of the people. The Duma considers the needs of working people as pressing and that there should be legislative measures taken for the protection of hired labor. The first step in that direction ought to be to give freedom to the hired laborer in all branches of work, freedom to organize, freedom to act, and to secure his material and spiritual welfare.

The Duma will also deem it its duty to employ all its forces in raising the standard of intelligence, and above all it will occupy itself in framing laws for free and general education.

Along with the aforementioned measures the Duma will pay special attention to the just distribution of the burden of taxation, unjustly imposed at present upon the poorer classes of inhabitants; and to the reasonable expenditure of the means of the state. Not less vital in legislative work will be a fundamental reform of local government and of self-government, extending the latter to all the inhabitants upon the principles of universal suffrage.

Bearing in mind the heavy burden imposed upon the people by your Majesty’s army and navy, the Duma will secure principles of right and justice in those branches of the service.

Finally, the Duma deems it necessary to point out as one of the problems pressing for solution the long-crying demands of the different nationalities. Russia is an empire inhabited by many different races and nationalities. Their spiritual union is possible only by meeting the needs of each one of them, and by preserving and developing their national characteristics. The Duma will try to satisfy those reasonable wants.

Your Majesty: On the threshold of our work stands one question which agitates the soul of the whole nation; and which agitates us, the chosen and elected of the people, and which deprives us of the possibility of undisturbedly proceeding toward the first part of our legislative activity. The first word uttered by the State Duma met with cries of sympathy from the whole Duma. It was the word amnesty. The country thirsts for amnesty, to be extended to all those whose offenses were the result of either religious or political convictions; and all persons implicated in the agrarian movement. These are demands of the national conscience which cannot be overlooked; the fulfilment of which cannot be longer delayed. Sire, the Duma expects of you full political amnesty as the first pledge of mutual understanding and mutual agreement between the Czar and his people.