Union of 17 October
10월당
A constitutional-monarchist party formed in the Russian Empire shortly after Nicholas II’s October Manifesto of 17 October 1905 (Old Style). Drawing on large landowners, businessmen and officials, it was the moderate right wing of Russian liberalism and was led from 1906 by Alexander Guchkov. It formed the largest faction in the Third State Duma but split in 1913 and had in effect ceased to function as a party by about 1915.
In depth
The Octobrists grew out of the moderate minority of the zemstvo and municipal congresses and took their name from the October Manifesto of 1905. Their programme called for the manifesto to be put into effect: a constitutional monarchy that kept the monarchy while limiting the monarch’s power, together with civil liberties, while upholding a ‘single and indivisible’ Russia and rejecting autonomy for any region other than Finland. According to the Russian-language source, the party began organising at the end of October 1905 and completed the process at its First Congress in Moscow on 8–12 February 1906; membership during the first revolution was about 75,000. Its central organ was the newspaper Golos Moskvy (1906–1915).
Unlike the Constitutional Democrats, the Octobrists were committed to constitutional monarchy from the start, and they generally cooperated with the governments of Witte and Stolypin. They did poorly in the 1906 elections to the First and Second Dumas, but after the electoral law was changed in favour of the propertied classes on 3 June 1907 they became the largest faction in the Third Duma (1907–1912). The Russian-language source puts their seats at 154 and notes that the Third Duma’s chairmen, Khomyakov, Guchkov and Rodzianko, were all Octobrists. The party backed Stolypin’s reform bills and land reform. When Guchkov endorsed the introduction of field courts-martial in August 1906, several founders left and formed the Party of Peaceful Renewal.
The party’s failure to turn its majority into influence over government policy unsettled it. After a conference in November 1913 adopted a resolution accusing the government of violating the October Manifesto, the Duma faction split into three in December. The sources give different figures: the English-language source counts 16 left Octobrists, 57 zemstvo Octobrists and 13 right Octobrists, while the Russian-language source counts 22 left Octobrists who followed Guchkov, 65 zemstvo Octobrists led by Rodzianko and 15 who declared themselves independent. When the party paper stopped appearing in July 1915 and the Central Committee ceased to meet, the party effectively ceased to exist; the left Octobrists and some zemstvo Octobrists joined the Progressive Bloc.
Guchkov and Rodzianko helped persuade Nicholas II to abdicate during the February Revolution of 1917 and took part in forming the Provisional Government. After the October Revolution some members, such as Ryabushinsky, joined the White movement in the Civil War and emigrated after the Whites were defeated.