The Decisive Counter Blow.—Witte was made prime min ister of a unified cabinet. But he could not persuade liberal leaders to enter his cabinet as the situation remained extremely uncertain. His minister of interior, Durnovo, was a reactionary. Pobiedonostsev resigned (Nov. I), but General Trepov was re tained in near proximity to the tsar. Agrarian troubles reached their height in November, and Count Witte proposed to his min ister of agriculture Kutler to prepare a draft of law on the basis of the expropriation of the landowners. It roused against Witte the nobility, who also founded their "Union." On the other hand Witte had to fight against the revolutionary movement which found its headquarters in the Petersburg soviet of work men's delegates. The soviet published decrees and tried to play the part of a second government. Trotsky, backed by Lenin, preached a "permanent revolution." However the policy of the Socialist Parties definitely alienated the sympathy of the possessing class. On Dec. 3 (i6) the Soviet with all its members present was arrested. Its substitutes replied by an armed uprising in Moscow (Dec. 7 [2o]). Until the 13th (26th) there was disorderly shoot ing in the streets ; then the guard regiments came down from Petersburg and the rebels were dispersed. There followed the so called "punitive expeditions" led by Generals Min, Rennenkampf, Moller-Zakomelsky which exterminated with ruthless cruelty what remained of the revolutionary movement in Russia and Siberia.
This decisive blow at the revolution weakened also the consti tutional movement. Witte was losing ground. A certain ex tension of electoral right, especially in the towns (Dec. 1 i [24]) was his last success. The predominance of peasant deputies re mained untouched as the peasantry was considered more con servative and reliable than the nobility. Witte promised to the tsar a pliant duma. He dismissed Kutler, but he refused to prom ise to dissolve the duma if it raised the agrarian question, a meas ure proposed by his competitor, the former home minister Gor emykin. Nicholas was encouraged to resistance by the repression of the revolutionary movement. He assured the deputations of the "Union of Russian People" that "the sun of Truth will shine bright over the Russian land" (Jan. 1906) and that his "autoc racy will remain unchanged as it had been of old" (March).
The fate of Witte was sealed when the elections, which he left comparatively free, gave the majority to the Constitutional Democrats (the "Cadets") together with peasants who wanted a radical agrarian reform. The Socialists, who still hoped for a revolution resulting in a real "constituent assembly," decided to boycott the elections. Witte resigned after having rendered the tsar his last service : he concluded a loan in France, which made the tsar free to deal with the duma as he liked. Just before the duma met (April 27, 1906) new "Fundamental laws" were published which curtailed its power (see DumA) while leaving to the tsar an extensive prerogative and to the council of empire, equal rights in legislation and the budget. The Government pre• served the right of extraordinary legislation, without the duma, in emergency.
The Dumas.—Under these conditions the struggle was un equal. The dissolution of the duma was assured when in its address to the Throne it proposed its own programme of em bodying into laws and enlarging the liberal promises of the Oc tober manifesto. After much delay Goremykin declared the pro
gramme "inadmissible." He received a vote of censure, which was, however, of no consequence. There was an avalanche of ques tions and interpellations in order to expose and to restrain the arbitrary rule of the bureaucracy—but all in vain. The Govern ment answered by practically boycotting the duma. Then, a long debate began on the agrarian project introduced by the Cadets, on the basis of partial expropriation of big landed estates. The Government published a sort of counter project and warned the country not to believe in the duma's promises. The duma re plied by a declaration which was interpreted by the Government as an illegal appeal to the country and served as a pretext for dissolution. On July 9 (22) the delegates found the Taurida palace locked and surrounded by army detachments and artil lery. About 200 of them moved to Viborg in Finland in order to protest and to invite the people to passive resistance in case no new duma were convoked. On the other hand, the congress of the "United Nobility" demanded the changing for their benefit of the electoral law by the mere will of the tsar, in violation of the "fundamental laws." Stolypin, who had dissolved the first duma and took the succession of Goremykin, did not dare to do so. But he tried instead to solve the agrarian question by means of emergency legislation. His scheme was to increase the lots of the well-to-do peasants at the expense of the poorer ones by dividing the communal land at the first request of the former, and thus to avert the danger of expropriating the estates of the nobles (edicts of Oct. 2 and Nov. 22). He also set up field court martials to pronounce death sentences against the remaining revolutionaries (Sept. I).