ABSTRACT
The failure of the liberals and the government to cooperate in the State Duma led to recriminations and stalemate. The revolutionary movement was suppressed with arrests and field court-martials. Both the first two Dumas were dissolved by the government. The Fundamental Laws removed some of the promises of the October Manifesto and established the State Council as a second chamber. In June 1907, the new premier, Stolypin, changed the franchise to get a conservative Duma, but still found it difficult to work with. His wider reform plans never happened, but his agricultural reform gave peasants rights to their strips of land as personal property and they could enclose them. Few established separate smallholdings, but peasants took advantage of the reforms, although the commune survived. The land reform was not a failure and peasant revolt ended.
Russia had a constitutional regime of a sort, but Stolypin, now dependent on a nationalist nobility, moved to the right. The Anglo-Russian Entente and an agreement with Japan enabled the tsar to re-build the army and navy, while the rise of panslavism and Russia’s ambitions in the Balkans led to conflict with Austria-Hungary and with Germany.
