AQA-Style Question 4a

Explain Why Stolypin Altered The Electoral Franchise Before Summoning the Third Duma

Stolypin altered the electoral franchise at the request of Nicholas II in order to remove radical groups from the Duma and replace them with representatives who were supportive of the Tsar and, in the immediate term, would accept his agrarian reforms.

The Second Duma has been characterised as the ‘Duma of National Anger’. Dominated by those of the radical left and right and with the liberal Kadets in a minority, this meant that not only was compromise to the Tsar not on the agenda, but that the Duma became effectively crippled by the radicals who did not want the Duma experiment to succeed. Nicholas and Stolypin’s response was to dissolve the Duma and alter the electoral franchise so that those groups who would dominate - landlords and nobles - would be those who supported the Tsar and who would therefore pass the Stolypin’s reform bill.

Neither Stolypin nor the Tsar supported the Duma, the latter seeing it merely as a consultative body and he was frustrated with the way in which it potentially could block his legislation. This disdain is manifested by the way in which he dissolved the Duma and used emergency powers retained by the Tsar in the Fundamental Laws to alter the franchise. He was also aware of the urgent need to reform Russian agriculture; an ongoing theme in Russian politics since at least the 1850s. Stolypin believed that agricultural reform would both strengthen the Tsar’s position (by producing a class of prosperous peasants who would support the status quo) and would improve the economy as well. He also saw it as a way of stemming the tide of growing peasant unrest that had followed the October Manifesto. He therefore saw any attempts to block the legislation as potentially making the political situation within the country - particularly the position of the Tsar - as more dangerous.

Stolypin altered the electorial franchise, then, predominantly in order to return a more compliant Duma who would support the Tsar and the reform bill. Disdaining the Duma and the radical left, and believing that the bill was the only way to improve the lot of the peasants and thereby produce a class or prosperous, conservative peasants and improve the economic situation in the country, he sought to amend the rules of the political game in order to push his legislation through.