June 3rd System

The electoral-law coup and the making of the system

On 3 June (O.S.) 1907 the Second State Duma was dissolved and the electoral law was changed. Dissolving the Duma was the emperor's prerogative, but altering the electoral law without the consent of the Duma and the State Council violated Article 87 of the Fundamental Laws. This is why the events became known as the 'June 3rd coup'.

The dissolution was prepared from the spring of 1907. Faced with the Duma's rejection or delay of government bills and its failure to pass the budget, the government made dissolution with a new electoral law its aim after the open break with the Duma on 16 April (O.S.). To build a pretext, ministers accused the Social-Democratic deputies of inciting soldiers against the state and demanded the lifting of parliamentary immunity for the whole RSDLP faction and the arrest of sixteen of its members. The Duma set up a special committee to investigate; before it could report, the Tsar dissolved the chamber and published the new electoral law.

The new law redrew the electorate around landowners and the wealthy. Urban voters were split into two curiae, seats for the Caucasus and Poland were sharply cut, and Central Asian, Kalmyk and Kirghiz inhabitants lost representation altogether. Decisively, the Duma seats allotted to the peasant and worker curiae were now filled by the general provincial electoral assembly, where the landowner and first urban curia always held the majority. The Duma was reduced from 518 to 442 deputies, and only 13-15 percent of the population could actually exercise the franchise.

The 'June 3rd Duma' and two shifting majorities

The 1907 elections produced the result the government wanted. The Octobrist faction grew from 20 to 148 deputies, the right grew from 10 to 49, and the moderate right grew from 24 to 69. The Social-Democratic faction fell from 65 to 19 deputies and the Trudoviks from 103 to 10, while the Socialist Revolutionaries and Popular Socialists boycotted.

The Third Duma largely voted through bills as approved rather than working on them. The government buried the chamber in a stream of trivial enactments, and the promised reforms of local administration and the courts were left unfinished. Its other feature was the 'two majorities': the Octobrists could reach the majority needed for legislation either with the right or with the Kadets and Progressists, which made the faction an independent partner of the government rather than a puppet, but also made avoidance of contentious issues routine.

The price was popular disaffection: during the Third and Fourth Dumas the public's interest in Duma politics fell away. The RSDLP's local activity was curtailed by police penetration and the conviction of its Duma deputies, and the regime did not restore the mass support that had carried the 1905 revolution.

Collapse

The system was strained by the First World War. In November 1914 the Bolshevik deputies of the Fourth Duma were stripped of immunity and sentenced to Siberian exile, and in August 1915 the army's Great Retreat allowed a coalition to form the majority Progressive Bloc demanding a government enjoying public confidence. That alliance destroyed the political basis of the June 3rd System: a pro-government majority manufactured through unequal representation and property qualifications. The Duma and the empire finally fell in the February Revolution of 1917.