the union of October seventeenth. The centre groups became known as "cadets" from the initial letters of the name of the largest section among them ("constitutional" in Russian being spelled with a k—the "K.D.'s" were termed the "kadets").
The five national parties, the Poles, Esthonians, Letts, Lithuanians. and Little Russians, acted in common as the League of Autonomists. There were about seventy of this group, but its numbers fluctuated greatly, as its members adhered to other parties from time to time.[1]
From the very first the government and the bureaucracy were hostile to the duma. Doubtless the demands of that body were of a radical character, but the ultra-revolutionary parties, and in especial the social revolutionaries, had expressly renounced terrorist methods; and moreover, all the revolutionary parties, Social Democratic Party, Social Revolutionary Party, and the League of Deliverance. had undergone notable changes amid the new conditions.
In the Social Democratic Party two groups had been constituted, a "majority," consisting of advocates of revolutionary methods, and a "minority" (led by Plehanov and others), desiring to use social democratic methods, and to have recourse to revolution in exceptional cases only.[2]
The majority desired to boycott the duma, but the minority wished to participate in the elections.
- ↑
Outside the duma there were yet other parties. At the beginning of 1906 eleven parties had been constituted with a definite program. I. Right and Raactionary: 1. Moderate Progressists; 2. National Economists; 3. Panrussian Commercial and Industrial Union; 4. Union of October Seventeenth; 5. Party of Law and Order; 6. Constitutional Monarchists (Tsarists). II. Centre: 7. Constitutionalist Democrats; 8. Liberals; 9. Radicals. Ill. Extreme Left: 10. Social Democrats; 11. Social Revolutionaries.
At the end of 1906 twenty-three parties and combinations were enumerated. l. Conservative and Reactionary: 1. Russian Monarchist Party; 2. League of the Russian People; 3. Russian Association. II. Centre: 4. Commercial and Industrial Union; 5. Union of October Seventeenth. Ill. Liberal Democrats: 6. Party of National Liberty (Constitutionalist Democrats); 7. Party of Democratic Reform; 8. Liberals; 9. Radicals. IV. Revolutionaries (Extreme Left): 10. Russian Social Democratic Labour Party; 11. Social Revolutionaries; 12. Populist Socialists (Young Narodniki); 13. Bund (Jewish); 14. Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania; 15. Lithuanian Social Democracy; 16. Ukrainian Revolutionary Party; 17. Lettish Social Democracy; 18. Polish Socialists; 19. Armenian Revolutionary Party; 20. Georgian Social Federalists; 21. Old Russian Peasants Union; 22. Railway Union; 23. Teachers Union. This is not an exhaustive list of parties and combinations, for only the most important and the strongest have been specifically enumerated.
- ↑ Further details regarding the social democrats will be found in § 152, and regarding the social revolutionaries in § 167.
