Constitutional Democratic Party

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"Kadet" redirects here. For other uses, see Kadet (disambiguation).
This article is about the Russian political party. For other parties with the same name, see Constitutional Democratic Party (disambiguation) and People's Freedom Party. For the Russian party dissolved in 2023, see People's Freedom Party (Russia).
Constitutional Democratic Party / Party of Peoples Freedom
Конституционно-демократическая партия / Па́ртия Наро́дной Свобо́ды
Founders
Founded12 October 1905 (1905-10-12)
Banned11 December 1917 (1917-12-11)[1]
Merger of
HeadquartersSaint Petersburg
NewspaperRech
Ideology
Political position
Colours  Azure   White
SloganSkill and work for the good of the Motherland
(Russian: Умение и труд на благо Родине)
State Duma (1906)
178 / 497
State Duma (Jan 1907)
124 / 518
State Duma (Oct 1907)
54 / 441
State Duma (1912)
59 / 432
Constituent Assembly
24 / 766

The Constitutional Democratic Party (

Pavel Miliukov
was the party's leader throughout its existence.

The Kadets' base of support were primarily

bourgeois professionals and intellectuals, including teachers, lawyers, writers, physicians and engineers.[9][10]

The Kadets' liberal economic program favored the workers' right to an eight-hour day[11] and the right to take strike action. The Kadets "were unwaveringly committed to full citizenship for all of Russia's minorities" and supported Jewish emancipation.[12] The party drew significant support from Jews[13] and Volga Germans and a significant number of each group were active party members.[14][15]

Radical origins (1905–1906)

The Constitutional Democratic Party was formed in Moscow on 12–18 October 1905 at the height of the

Petr Nikolayevich Durnovo from the cabinet
.

With some socialist and revolutionary parties boycotting the election to the

Social Democrat deputies went to in Vyborg, Finland (and thus beyond the reach of Russian police) and responded with the Vyborg Manifesto
(or the "Vyborg Appeal"), written by Miliukov. In the manifesto, they called for passive resistance, non-payment of taxes and draft avoidance. The appeal failed to have an effect on the population at large and proved both ineffective and counterproductive, leading to a ban on its authors, including the entire Kadet leadership, from participation in future Dumas. This was further accentuated by the force of the tsar trying to control and deteriorate the power of the Duma.

It was not until later in 1906, with the revolution in retreat, that the Kadets abandoned revolutionary and

expression, press, congregation and association
.

Parliamentary opposition (1906–1917)

When the Second Duma was convened on 20 February 1907, the Kadets found themselves in a difficult position. Their leadership was not represented in the Duma after the Vyborg Manifesto fiasco and their numbers were reduced to about 100. Although still the largest faction in the Duma, they no longer dominated the parliament and their attempts to concentrate on lawmaking were frustrated by radicals on the left and on the right who saw the Duma as a propaganda tool. Although the Kadets had moderated their position in the Second Duma, they refused to vote in May 1907 for a resolution denouncing revolutionary violence which gave the government of Pyotr Stolypin a pretext to dissolve the Second Duma on 3 June 1907 and change the electoral law to drastically limit the representation of leftist and liberal parties.

Due to the changes in the electoral law, the Kadets were reduced to a relatively small (54 seats) opposition group in the Third Duma (1907–1912). Although excluded from the more important Duma committees, the Kadets were not entirely powerless and could determine the outcome of certain votes when allied with the centrist Octobrist faction against right-wing nationalist deputies. With the revolution crushed by 1908, they moderated their position even further as they voted to denounce revolutionary violence, no longer sought confrontation with the government and concentrated on influencing legislation whenever possible. By 1909, Miliukov could claim that the Kadets were now "the opposition of His Majesty, not the opposition to His Majesty", which caused only moderate dissent among the left-leaning faction of the party.

Although the Kadets, allied with the Progressive faction and the Octobrists, were able to push some liberal bills (religious freedoms, freedom of the press and of the labor unions) through the Duma, the bills were either diluted by the upper house of the parliament or vetoed by the tsar. The failure of their legislative program further discredited the Kadets' strategy of peaceful change through gradual reform.

In 1910, the government rekindled its pre-revolutionary

Nikolai Gredeskul and Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams[citation needed] argued for a shift to the right. The disagreements were temporarily put aside in July 1914 at the outbreak of World War I
when the Kadets unconditionally supported the government and found an outlet for their energies in various kinds of relief work under the umbrella of the All-Russian Union of Zemstvos and the All-Russian Union of Cities.

Once the initial outburst of national unity feelings died down in mid-1915 as Russian retreat from

Galicia showed the government's incompetence, the Kadets, together with the Progressive faction, the Octobrist faction and a part of the Nationalist faction in the Duma, formed the Progressive Bloc
in August 1915 which was critical of the government's prosecution of the war and demanded a government of "popular confidence". As Russia's defeats in the war multiplied, the Kadets' opposition became more pronounced, culminating in Miliukov's speech in the Duma in October 1916 when he all but accused government ministers of treason.

1917 Revolution

Logo of Svoboda i Kultura [Let There Be Light! "Freedom and Culture" 1917], a Kadet magazine put out by Semyon Frank in 1917

During the

dual power, the Provisional Government immediately attempted to deal with issues of the many nationalities in the Russian Empire. They introduced legislation abolishing all limitations based on religion and nationality and introduced an element of self-determination by transferring power from governors-general to local representatives. They issued a decree recognising Polish autonomy, more as a symbolic gesture in light of the German occupation of this territory. However, this tendency was limited as most of the ministers feared a break up of the empire. One of the Kadet leaders, Prince Lvov
, became Prime Minister and Miliukov became Russia's Foreign Minister. A radical party just 11 years earlier, after the February Revolution the Kadets occupied the rightmost end of the political spectrum since all monarchist parties had been dissolved and the Kadets were the only openly functioning non-socialist party remaining.

The Kadets' position in the Provisional Government was compromised when Miliukov's promise to the

Bolshevik propaganda. By the summer of 1917, many prominent Kadets were supporters of Lavr Kornilov during the Kornilov affair.[17]

With the Bolshevik seizure of power on 25–26 October and subsequent transfer of political power to the

Kaledin.[18]

Russian Civil War and decline (1918–1940)

After the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War, most of the Kadet leadership was forced to emigrate and continued publishing newspapers abroad ("Vozrojdénie") until World War II. However, Oldenburg negotiated a working relationship between the Russian Academy of Science and the Bolsheviks, signing an agreement that the Academy supported the Soviet State in February 1918.

Refoundation

A party called

Russian SFSR in 1990 and based on the program of the historical Kadet party. However, the party soon drifted into hardline nationalist politics and joined the national-communist National Salvation Front
and supported the Supreme Soviet against President Yeltsin.

List of prominent Kadets

Electoral history

State Duma

Year Party leader Performance Status
Votes Percentage Seats
1906 Pavel Milyukov Unknown Unknown
179 / 478
 1st Majority
1907 (January) Pavel Milyukov Unknown Unknown
98 / 518
 2nd Minority
1907 (October) Pavel Milyukov Unknown Unknown
124 / 509
 3rd Minority
1912 Pavel Milyukov Unknown Unknown
59 / 509
 4th Minority

Constitutional Assembly

Year Party leader Performance Status
Votes Percentage Seats
1917 Pavel Milyukov 2,088,000 4.7%
17 / 703
 3rd Minority

See also

References

  1. ^ https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/nov/28.htm Decree On The Arrest Of The Leaders Of The Civil War Against The Revolution
  2. ^ Struve, Peter (1932). The Social Liberalism. Internationales Handwtsrterbuch des Gewerkschaftswesens. pp. 412–423.
  3. ISBN 9789639776173
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-307-78861-0
    .
  5. ^ Pearson, Raymond (1977). The Russian Moderates and the Crisis of Tsarism 1914–1917. Springer. pp. 2–3.
  6. ^ This name should not be confused with the term cadets, which referred to students at military schools in the Imperial Russia.
  7. ^ Hans Rogger, Jewish Policies and Right-wing Politics in Imperial Russia, p. 20.
  8. ^ The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-government (eds. Terence Emmons & Wayne S. Vucinich), p. 441.
  9. ^ Melissa Kirschke Stockdale, Paul Miliukov and the Quest for a Liberal Russia, 1880–1918, p. 142.
  10. ^ James W. Long, From Privileged to Dispossessed: The Volga Germans, 1860–1917, p. 207.
  11. ^ Peter Gatrell, Government, Industry and Rearmament in Russia, 1900–1914: The Last Argument of Tsarism, p. 81.
  12. ^ Rogger, p. 20.
  13. ^ Rogger, p. 20.
  14. ^ Rogger, p. 20.
  15. ^ Long, pp. 207–208.
  16. ^ Orlando Figes, The People's Tragedy
  17. ^ Stephen Kotkin, Stalin (Vol. 1: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928), Penguin Books, 2014, p. 187.
  18. ^ "Decree on the Arrest of the Leaders of the Civil War Against the Revolution".
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