Russian Constitution of 1906
The Russian Constitution of 1906 exists because a Grand Duke threatened suicide. When the Russian Revolution of 1905 was tearing the empire apart, Nicholas II's first choice to head a military dictatorship was Grand Duke Nicholas. The Grand Duke instead threatened to shoot himself in the head unless the Tsar accepted a set of reform proposals. Nicholas, who had sworn at his coronation to pass his full autocratic power on to his son, gave in unwillingly. What could make an absolute monarch bend like that, and how much power had he actually agreed to give away? And once granted, how long would a document he resented actually last?
Mikhail Speransky penned the Set of Laws of the Russian Empire in 1832, the first codification of how the Tsar could exercise his power. These laws could be altered or repealed by the emperor alone. Russian rulers, though, were bound by two constraints regardless. The Tsar and his spouse had to profess the Russian Orthodox faith. Both also had to follow the succession laws set down by Emperor Paul I. Apart from those two limits, the power of the Russian emperor was virtually without bound.
A Boyar Duma had advised Russian rulers since Muscovite times, but Peter I abolished it in 1721. In its place, Peter created the Governing Senate, a body of nine members, later grown to ten. An Ober-Procurator, appointed by the sovereign like every other member, oversaw its administration of the empire. The emperor could submit draft decrees to this body for its recommendations. He was never bound to ask, though, nor to follow its advice once given. By the late nineteenth century the Senate had become Russia's highest judicial organ, with every official and legal institution under its control. Its rulings on the legal code counted as final unless the Tsar overruled them himself. Even so, the monarch always kept the Senate on a short leash. He named and dismissed its members, could change its powers, and could overturn its decisions at will. It was never, in the end, a parliament in the modern sense.
Alexander I set up a Privy Committee to explore creating a parliament and a ministerial system. The ministerial system was eventually adopted, but the Privy Committee's parliamentary plans collapsed under the Napoleonic Wars and opposition from conservative nobles. Alexander also created a State Council, which began with 35 members and later grew to 60. Its job was investigating, promulgating and abolishing laws, organized into four departments: Legislative; Civil and Ecclesiastical Administration; State Economy; and Industry, Science and Commerce. Each department had its own presiding State Secretary and met separately, while the full Council convened only to review laws the Tsar's ministers proposed. The Council could examine anything sent to it. But it had no power to suggest changes to existing law, or to investigate matters the Tsar had not raised himself. Decision-making authority rested with the emperor throughout, who appointed and dismissed the Council's members at will.
Alexander II, Alexander I's nephew, later entertained his own reform ideas. They were backed by a project from Count Mikhail Loris-Melikov, his Minister of Interior since August 1880. One proposal called for two Imperial commissions, filled with indirectly elected members, to advise the emperor on further reforms. Alexander II was assassinated on the very day he meant to sign that plan into law, killing the reform effort outright. His son Alexander III insisted on preserving the autocracy intact instead. Nicholas II succeeded his father in 1894, holding the same commitment to absolute monarchy. Peasant unrest and revolutionary organizations were growing inside his empire all the while. When provincial and municipal dumas demanded a national legislative assembly, Nicholas refused it. He offered only broader authority for local councils, insurance for factory workers, and an end to censorship. Liberals found this far from enough.
The next push toward a real constitution would come from a war Russia was losing, and from a massacre in the streets of its own capital.
Russia's defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 collided with a rising tide of revolutionary feeling, igniting the Russian Revolution of 1905. That upheaval began with Bloody Sunday. Imperial troops opened fire on thousands of unarmed protesters, mostly urban workers and intellectuals, who had gathered to present a petition to the Tsar. Several protesters were killed. As word of the massacre spread across the empire, it merged with anger over the disaster in the Far East. Together, they sparked a full uprising against the emperor's authority. The Tsarist army stayed largely loyal to Nicholas throughout. But his closest advisors became convinced that fundamental change in state administration was now unavoidable, if the monarchy hoped to survive.
Count Sergei Witte had just returned from New Hampshire, where he negotiated the Treaty of Portsmouth ending the war with Japan. The Tsar then named him chairman of the Council of Ministers. Witte proposed an elected legislature, basic civil rights, and a constitutional monarchy. The October Manifesto followed in 1905, promising civil rights and an elected Duma, without whose approval no law could be enacted in Russia.
Three drafts were then prepared to revise Speransky's Fundamental Laws. The Tsar chose the one written by Peter Kharitonov, Deputy State Secretary of the State Chancellery. Officials also studied constitutions from Austria-Hungary, Japan and Prussia, alongside a rival draft published abroad by the Union of Liberation. The State Chancellery's own draft went through five sessions of the Council of Ministers. There, changes strengthened the emperor's powers at the expense of the new parliament. Nicholas then chaired further revisions to the draft himself before publishing the new constitution in 1906. With that act, Russia was officially transformed from an absolute monarchy into a constitutional one. Just how constitutional it truly was would depend entirely on what powers the emperor had kept for himself.
Article 4 of the new constitution declared that the emperor possessed "supreme sovereign power," and that obedience to his commands was mandated by God himself. The document also made him personally inviolable, meaning no one could prosecute or hold him legally accountable for his actions.
Nicholas retained an absolute veto over all legislation, along with the sole right to propose any revision of the constitution itself. He alone could declare war, make peace, and negotiate treaties, and he held supreme command of the armed forces. The emperor also controlled the minting of money, and could grant pardons or quash judicial proceedings at will. He appointed and dismissed his ministers however he wished, deciding the nature and scope of their duties himself.
Chapter Two fixed the order of succession to the throne, declaring the thrones of Poland and Finland inseparable from Russia's own. Women could inherit the throne, but only after every dynastically qualified male descendant of the Romanovs had been passed over. A woman who did rule kept every privilege of the office, though her husband was barred from taking the title of emperor. Anyone born to a Romanov who married someone "not of corresponding dignity," meaning outside any royal or sovereign house, lost their claim to the throne. So did anyone who inherited the throne while already ruling a country whose state religion was not Orthodox. They also had to renounce that other throne and faith, or lose their claim.
That was the sovereign's own share of power under the new order. What the constitution promised his subjects in return was a separate and far more contested question.
Chapter Seven made Orthodox Christianity Russia's state religion, and required both the emperor and his consort to profess it. The Tsar was named the "supreme defender and guardian" of the Russian Orthodox Church. Adherents of other faiths were still promised full religious liberty, a guarantee the text extended explicitly to "Jews, Muslims and heathens."
Chapter Eight then set out the rights owed to ordinary citizens, spanning articles 69 through 83. These included protection from arbitrary arrest and detention, the inviolability of private homes, and protection from illegal search and seizure. Citizens could also travel, though the right was subject to restriction, and could own private property. The document promised freedom of assembly, freedom of expression, the right to organize unions and similar groups, and freedom of religion. In return, every male subject called to service owed mandatory military duty regardless of social rank, along with taxes and other lawful obligations.
Those were the rights granted on paper. Whether the new Duma could actually hold the government to them, though, ran into much narrower limits.
Article 86 required the agreement of the emperor, the Duma and the State Council before any law could take effect. Article 87 let the Tsar and his cabinet issue decrees while the Duma was out of session. Those decrees expired, though, if not submitted to the new Duma within two months of its opening, or if either chamber rejected them. The same article barred the emperor from using decree power to alter the constitution, or to change the election rules for the Duma and Council.
Nicholas broke that rule anyway in the so-called Coup of June 1907, an act that badly damaged his standing among Russian liberals. Many concluded the entire constitution was a sham, fueling more revolutionary agitation that would eventually help topple the Tsar. The legislature, meanwhile, had no power of impeachment at all.
Both the State Council and the Duma were required to meet at least once a year. The Tsar alone, though, decided how long their sessions or recesses would run. He could appoint up to half the State Council's members, while Duma deputies served five-year terms set by the state election statutes. Either chamber, or both, could be dissolved by the emperor at any time, though he had to announce new Duma elections the moment he dissolved it. Both houses could propose new laws, except changes to the constitution itself, which only the monarch could initiate. The Imperial Court Ministry and government loans both sat outside the Duma's reach, and it could not withhold funds meant to repay such loans. If the Duma denied a budget request for army or navy manpower, the military had a workaround. It could simply draft the same number of recruits as the year before.
Chapter Eleven created the office of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and made every member of that council answerable to the emperor for their conduct. The Duma or State Council could question ministers about their actions, but only the Tsar had the power to remove one from office.
On paper, the Duma could interrogate the men who ran the government. It could never force one out, and that gap would matter once Nicholas and his parliament started colliding in earnest.
Nicholas dismissed the First and Second Dumas after calling them "unsatisfactory." He then unilaterally rewrote the election statutes, in direct violation of the constitution, to push more landed and propertied voters into future Dumas. The resulting Third and Fourth Dumas lasted longer. They still clashed with the Tsar and his government, though, over the direction of state policy and the fundamental nature of the Russian state itself.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 followed, and the Duma took a leading role in forcing Nicholas's abdication. Tsar Nicholas abdicated in February 1917, by the Old Style calendar, ending both his reign and the monarchy itself. A Provisional Government, formed by the Fourth Duma, took over administration of the country, with Alexander Kerensky emerging as its most prominent leader. Kerensky unilaterally abolished the Russian monarchy later that year, formally scrapping the 1906 Constitution along with it. That liberal government did not last either. The Bolsheviks overthrew it within months, in the October Revolution, and took control of Russia that November.
The Bolsheviks went on to found the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the 30th of December 1922. Before that, they had already enacted their own constitution, establishing Russia as a Bolshevik state. That Soviet constitution was later replaced by the 1924 charter, then by new versions in 1936 and 1977. The 1977 constitution held until the Soviet Union's collapse, when Russia adopted the governing document it still uses today, in 1993.
Common questions
What was the Russian Constitution of 1906?
The Russian Constitution of 1906 was a major revision of the 1832 Fundamental Laws that transformed Russia's absolutist government into one where the emperor shared power with a parliament for the first time. It contained an introduction and eleven chapters, comprising a total of 124 articles, and was enacted in 1906 just before the first State Duma opened.
When was the Russian Constitution of 1906 enacted?
The Russian Constitution of 1906 was enacted in 1906, immediately before the opening of the first State Duma. It followed the October Manifesto, which Tsar Nicholas II issued in 1905 during the Russian Revolution of 1905.
Why did Nicholas II agree to the Russian Constitution of 1906?
Nicholas II granted the constitution as a last-ditch effort to keep the empire from disintegrating during the Russian Revolution of 1905. He gave in after his chosen candidate to lead a military dictatorship, Grand Duke Nicholas, threatened to shoot himself unless the Tsar accepted reform proposals from his Minister of Finance, Sergei Witte.
Who wrote the draft of the Russian Constitution of 1906?
Nicholas II chose the draft written by Peter Kharitonov, Deputy State Secretary of the State Chancellery, out of three proposed drafts. The drafters also studied constitutions from Austria-Hungary, Japan and Prussia, along with a rival draft published abroad by the Union of Liberation.
What powers did the Tsar keep under the Russian Constitution of 1906?
Under the Russian Constitution of 1906, the Tsar kept an absolute veto over all legislation and the sole right to propose changes to the constitution itself. He also retained sole command of the armed forces, the right to declare war and make peace, and the power to appoint and dismiss his ministers and dissolve the Duma at will.
When and how was the Russian Constitution of 1906 abolished?
The Russian Constitution of 1906 was formally abolished in 1917, after Tsar Nicholas abdicated in February of that year under the Old Style calendar. Alexander Kerensky, leader of the Provisional Government formed by the Fourth Duma, unilaterally abolished the Russian monarchy later that year, ending the constitution along with it.
All sources
5 references cited across the entry