724 Ch. 18 • The Dominant Powers in the Age of Liberalism
As the Duma debated land reform, an issue on which the tsar refused
any compromise, Nicholas decreed the establishment of an upper assem
bly, the State Council. With members to be drawn from the high clergy, the
army, or other loyal institutions, it would counteract the influence of the
Duma. The tsar then dismissed Witte and announced that he would pro
mulgate any decree he pleased while the Duma was not in session. When
the Kadets petitioned Nicholas to abolish the State Council, make minis
ters responsible to the Duma, and turn over some noble estates to the
peasants, he dissolved the first Duma.
The Revolution of 1905 ended in failure, but its memory could not be
effaced. The tsar had been forced to grant a parliament and the promise of
limited civil rights. Many people within the Russian professional class,
particularly bureaucrats and lawyers, remained sympathetic to the reforms
after they had been undone by the tsar.
The Revolution of 1905 heightened the divisions among exiled Russian
socialists. Mensheviks contended that compromise with bourgeois reform
ers would increase socialist support within Russia. Lenin and the Bolshe
viks, on the other hand, believed that the failed revolution had clearly
demonstrated that the Russian proletariat in the large cities was already a
revolutionary force, and that the first stage of Marx’s promised revolution
could be achieved if workers and peasants joined together.
Nicholas II named Peter Stolypin (1862—1911) prime minister, and in
June 1907 ordered the dissolution of a second elected Duma even though it
was more conservative than the first. The tsar established military field courts