Nearly half the members of the first duma were peasants. To be precise, on June 13th, of 478 deputies, 204 were peasants, this being 45·5 per cent. The other members were adherents of the intelligentsia. Speaking generally, from Russia proper and from the electorates of the other national sections, the best elements were sent to the duma. No more than two illiterates were elected.
On May 10th in the winter palace, the duma was opened by the tsar with a speech from the throne. Muromcev, a cadet (vide infra), the man who during the reign of Alexander III had been dismissed from the chair of Roman law at Moscow university, was elected president.
Before and still more during the elections occurred the formation of the first publicly and legally recognised political parties. As a matter of course they were at this time inchoate, for program and organisation could only be developed and tested in actual working. One hundred and five of the deputies were independents.
It need hardly be said that all three sections, the right, the left, and the centre, were represented in the duma, and that each of them consisted of several subsections. In the first duma the party of the right was the weakest. At the outset there were a few independents really belonging to the right, who subsequently constituted themselves as a group of progressists, twelve in number; these progressists led the opposition, which was friendly to the government. The left and the centre formed a very large anti-governmental majority.
The left, too, at first consisted of independents. About one hundred of these combined to form the Labour Party (trudoviki). To this belonged the few social democrats and Social revolutionaries in the house, for some had been elected although both these parties had boycotted the duma. Not until later were some social democrats elected in Caucasia in conformity with the tactics of the minority of the party. They formed an independent group in the duma, comprising seventeen deputies. The social revolutionaries did not constitute a distinct party.
The centre consisted of four sections. The main body contained the constitutional democrats, 160 in number. There was a small body of democratic reformers; there was a party of "peaceful renovation"; and there were the members of
