ABSTRACT
By 1905, the entire educated Russian public whole-heartedly despised the Tsardom, if not the Tsar himself. Basil Miliukov was fully aware of his differences with the revolutionaries, Social Democrats and Socialist Revolutionaries alike. He was no more eager to attempt a union of the three groups—Left-liberals, Maklakovite liberal-Right, and the Slavophiles—than were the socialists. During most of 1905 the Liberationists and Zemstvo-Constitutionalists devoted their attention not so much to the attempt to form a political party as to the effort to organize support among public bodies, the zemstvo and municipal congresses and "professional unions". As the Tsar was finally compelled to make his first constitutional concessions from the Bulygin Duma onwards, the spotlight was thrown onto the Kadet reaction to these measures. In 1905, no one foresaw as clearly as Lenin that the most consistent and ruthless, the most rationalist group would secure its ends if all groups were not to fight together for a common goal.
