Mikhail Vladimirovich Rodzianko
Михаил Владимирович Родзянко
The parliamentarian the Tsar called 'fat-bellied': last chairman of the Imperial Duma
In February 1917, Rodzianko telegraphed the Stavka: "The capital is in a state of anarchy. The government is paralysed. Any delay is fatal. The last hour has struck." Nicholas II read it and told his court minister: "That fat-bellied Rodzianko has sent me some more nonsense."
Of Ukrainian noble stock, Rodzianko co-founded the Octobrist Party in 1905, pursuing constitutional reform of the Tsarist system through parliamentarism. As chairman of the Third and Fourth Dumas (1911–1917), he openly denounced Rasputin and confronted the wartime government's paralysis. During the February Revolution he led the Provisional Committee of the Duma and drove the negotiations for Nicholas II's abdication, but his constitutional-monarchy project collapsed when Grand Duke Michael refused the throne. He emigrated to Yugoslavia in 1920, dying in poverty after completing his memoir The Reign of Rasputin. Reviled by monarchist émigrés as a traitor and dismissed by the left, Rodzianko embodied the brief, thwarted experiment of Russian parliamentary politics.
Career timeline
- 1905Co-founds the Octobrist Party on a constitutional-monarchist platform
- 1907–1911Deputy, Third State Duma; vice-chairman from 1909
- 1911–1912Chairman, Third Duma (succeeding Guchkov)
- 1912–1917Chairman, Fourth Duma; participates in the Progressive Bloc
- 1917.2–3Heads Provisional Committee of the Duma; leads abdication talks with Nicholas II
- 1917 여름Founds Liberal Republican Party with Guchkov
- 1917.10–1920Anti-Bolshevik activity in Don and Crimea under Denikin and Wrangel
- 1920–1924Exile in Yugoslavia; writes The Reign of Rasputin: an Empire's Collapse