Vyborg Manifesto

Did You Know?

• The Duma was dissolved just 72 days after it was convoked, on 21 July (8 July O.S.) 1906.
• The government's first two bills to the Duma were for a greenhouse at the Imperial University of Dorpat and a new laundry—a deliberate declaration of 'legislative war.'
• Prince Georgy Lvov became ill while traveling to Vyborg and had to return to the capital, though he sympathized with the manifesto.

Background

The Constitutional Democratic Party, or Kadets, formed in Moscow from 12 to 18 October 1905 during the Russian Revolution of 1905, after Tsar Nicholas II issued the October Manifesto. The Kadets stood to the left of the Octobrists, another liberal party, and initially demanded universal suffrage, including for women, and a Constituent Assembly to decide the country's form of government, though they were ambiguous on constitutional monarchy. Negotiations to join Prime Minister Sergei Witte's cabinet in October and November 1905 failed over the Kadets' radical demands and Witte's refusal to exclude reactionaries like Pyotr Nikolayevich Durnovo.

The first State Duma, convoked after the revolution, quickly became a revolutionary tribune. On its first day, deputies condemned political repression and demanded amnesty for political prisoners, a prerogative of the Tsar, along with universal suffrage, land reforms, executive powers for the Duma, a responsible government, and abolition of the State Council. The government responded by passing only trivial bills, effectively declaring legislative war.

Manifesto

After the Duma's dissolution, Kadet members and liberals traveled to Vyborg, Finland's second city, to protest. There, they signed a manifesto written by Pavel Milyukov, calling on the Russian people to rebel by refusing to pay taxes or provide army recruits. The manifesto was signed by 120 Kadet and 80 Trudovik and Social Democrat deputies, along with Social Revolutionaries and Muslims. Historian Orlando Figes described it as a typical example of the Kadets' militant posturing since the Duma's opening.

Aftermath

The manifesto met with nearly universal indifference from the people, enabling the government to use repressive measures against its liberal critics. Over 100 leading Kadet members were tried and suspended from the Duma, replaced in the Second and Third Dumas by less radical and less talented politicians who followed a more conservative line, staying within Tsarist laws. The entire Kadet leadership was banned from future Dumas. As a result, the Kadet Party lost trust in popular support and no longer claimed to represent the people, consciously becoming the party of the bourgeois. The liberals' failure to rally the masses left them hoping to persuade the Tsarist regime to liberalize, while fearing the masses more. Despite their shift toward conservatism, the government remained suspicious of the Kadets until the monarchy's fall in 1917.