DUMA, a Russian word signifying a council or assembly, from dam, thought ; dumat, to meditate, reflect. A town council or city hall is called g6rodskaya duma, from g6rod, town; the national Parliament is termed gosudirst vennaya duma, from gosudirstvo, state, empire. In Western literature Duma means the national Parliament of Russia, the first of which was opened 10 May 1906. On 19 Aug. 1905 the Tsar Nicholas II issued a manifesto announcing that he had granted a constitution to Russia and that an imperial Duma would be created. This was the second attempt made by a Russian sovereign to introduce a semblance of popular government. Already in the 16th and 17th centuries the tsars of Old Muscovy convoked occasional 'Zemski Sobors,p with almost nuga tory powers ; and Ivan the Terrible once sum moned an assembly to deliberate upon the ques tion as to whether a war with Poland should be continued. All that we know of this ing is that its 399 members readily voted for the continuation of the war and at the same time begged the tyrant's pardon for having dared to express any opinion at all. Again, in 1613, when a new dynasty had to be chosen in the place of the extinct Rurik dynasty, the boyars (aristocrats) convoked a kind of States General which elected the House of Romanoff. After 300 years that house was swept away by the revolution of 1917. But it was the vain gloriously ambitious Catharine II who first made a show of being imbued with the consti tutional and humanitarian maxims of Mon tesquieu and Beccaria. By a rescript dated 14 Dec. 1766 she announced a great legislative assembly which, though not destined to deal with the form of government, was otherwise left free to discuss the grievances of the people and to suggest remedies. On 30 July 1767 the assembly of 564 members met in Moscow. In December 1768 the majority were called into the army or sent home. A small remnant continued their innocuous sessions till 1774, when Catha rine abolished them also. For the next 132 years Russia waited for representative government.
The Duma of 1906 was formally inaugurated by a speech of the Tsar. He promised that he would "unswervingly uphold the institutions he had granted." But the often-disillusioned con stitutional democrats who formed the majority received his words with coldness and misgtv ings. They soon discovered that the wish near est their hearts —an amnesty for political of fenders — would not be realized. The first ses sion was brief and stormy. The deputies, over endowed with the gifts of oratory and possess ing little or no experience of affairs, made mag nificent speeches and magnificent demands. The Duma was thwarted at every turn by the gov ernment and was finally dissolved after an existence of 10 weeks (22 July). "A cruel dis appointment has befallen our expectations," read the Imperial ukase; "the representatives of the nation, instead of applying themselves to the work of productive legislation, have strayed into spheres beyond their competence, and have been making inquiries into the acts of local authori ties established by ourselves, and have been making comments on the imperfections of the fundamental laws, which can only be modified by our Imperial will."' The "inquiries)) referred to concerned the massacres at Bialystok, whither the Duma had sent a commission; its report created a profound and melancholy impression. It was also the drastic agrarian program of the majority of the Duma that helped to bring about the crisis. Indeed, unless the Tsar had con sented to abolish the whole of the bureaucracy and appoint a responsible ministry, it is difficult to see how he could have allowed the Duma to continue. The cleavage was too deep between his officials and those whom he called the repre sentatives of the nation?) The second Duma was convened on 5 March 1907, and only lived till 16 June 1907. The third met in November 1907 and sat till 1912. The fourth Duma opened in November 1912. See RUSSIA - GOVERNMENT ; HISTORY; REVOLUTION.
limn F. KLEIN, Editorial Staff of The Americana.