Union of the Russian People
러시아 인민연맹
A royalist far-right nationalist party of the Russian Empire, founded after the Revolution of 1905 with Alexander Dubrovin as chairman, and the most important of the Black-Hundredist monarchist organisations between 1905 and 1917. It aimed to rally the people behind Great Russian nationalism and the Tsar, espousing anti-socialist, anti-liberal and above all antisemitic views, and it was dissolved after the February Revolution of 1917.
In depth
Five days after the October Manifesto, Vladimir Purishkevich, Apollo Maikov, Pavel Bulatsel, Vladimir Gringmut and others met at Dubrovin's home and agreed to set up a political organisation, and on 8 November [O.S. 26 October] 1905 they formally announced the founding of the Union of the Russian People; Emperor Nicholas II personally approved its creation. Its first public rally, with about 2,000 people, was held on 21 November in the Mikhailovsky Manege in St Petersburg, and by 1906 it had over 300,000 members. Conservative Orthodox clergy allied with it, and prominent churchmen such as John of Kronstadt, the monk Iliodor and Bishop Hermogenes supported it.
The Union called for 'a Great Russia, united and indivisible' and the restoration of a 'popular autocracy' that it believed had existed before Russia was taken over by intellectuals and Jews, and it saw the State Duma not as a legislature but as a body to inform the Tsar of the people's needs. Jews were barred from membership even if they had converted to Christianity, and its programme proposed that the entire Jewish population of the Empire elect no more than three Duma deputies. Its paramilitary bands, the Black Hundreds, fought revolutionaries violently in the streets, and its leaders organised political assassinations, among them the murders of the Kadet Duma deputies Mikhail Herzenstein and Grigory Iollos, responsibility for which was later acknowledged by its leader Nikolai Markov.
Deputy chairman Purishkevich broke away after internal disputes in 1907 to found the Michael the Archangel Russian People's Union, and from 1908 the Union split into competing factions: Dubrovin's own group registered separately in August 1912, and leadership of the main body passed to Markov in November 1912. After the February Revolution of 1917 all Black-Hundredist organisations were forcibly dissolved and banned, and Dubrovin was arrested. Scholars disagree over whether the Union was an early example of fascism or a proto-fascist precursor that fell short of it.