Date: 1907-06
Source: ru:PSS/v54
Source: LCW vol 54

The upper strata of the bourgeoisie, frightened by the revolution, supported the counter-revolutionary nobility. Tsarism believed that it would find help and support from the counter-revolutionary elements of the bourgeoisie and the landowners.

The electoral law of June 3 (16), 1907, is an example of shameless falsification. Here are some data characterizing this law:
The population is divided into "curiae": landowners, urban residents of the first and second categories, peasants, Cossacks, workers. Electors, elected separately by curiae (sometimes
not directly, but through authorized representatives), are grouped by the government into provincial electoral assemblies, and these latter elect deputies to the Duma!

The law distributes the number of electors in such a way that in advance the majority in
the electoral assemblies is obtained in 28 provinces (out of 50) only by the landowners, while in the others - by the electors of the first urban curia (large capitalists).

The general picture is as follows: 200,000 nobles send 2,594 electors to the electoral assemblies of 53
provinces, that is, 49.4% of the total number of electors; 1/2 million or about that many capitalists of the first urban curia have 788 electors (15%); about 8 million urban residents of the second urban curia send 590 electors (11.2%); about 70 million peasants and Cossacks have 1,168 electors (22.2%) and about 12 million workers - 112 electors (2.1%).

It is not surprising that such an electoral law gives a "black," counter-revolutionary Duma - a true
"Chambre introuvable." But it is surprising that not only bourgeois liberals,
but even social-democrats managed to get their representatives into this Duma.

In the workers' curia, all the electors are social-democrats. The ultra-reactionary nobles, who have a majority in the provincial electoral assemblies, are forced to admit social-democrats (in six provinces, the law requires one deputy to be chosen among the workers; in other provinces, social-democrats obtain mandates through agreements with liberals).

In the Third Duma, the party of the Octobrists - the party of reactionary nobles and
large capitalists, submissive to tsarism - prevailed. But even these "slaves" could not satisfy the camarilla of Nicholas II - this black band, organizing pogroms and attacks
on opposition deputies.

The government, which falsified the elections to bring the Octobrists into the Third Duma,
is now falsifying the elections to send more "loyal" parties - "nationalists" and "far right"
- into the Fourth Duma.

The pressure exceeded all bounds. The clergy were ordered to participate en masse in
the elections and to vote for the right; arrests of opposition candidates, fines on the press, closure of newspapers, striking suspicious individuals from the electoral lists - all this was
applied with such cynicism that even the right and even the nobles protested.

As a result, we have an even "blacker," even more right-wing Duma, but the defeated today are the Octobrists. The liberal opposition and the revolutionary democracy (social-democratic workers and petty-bourgeois peasant democrats) almost maintained the status quo.

The latest data on 438 (out of 442 elected) deputies of the Fourth Duma allow us to make the following comparison: