Russia were urging that it was the duty of the Socialists to co-operate
with the Duma! Yet there was a section of the Marxists engaged in a
constant agitation against the Duma, preaching the doctrine of the class
struggle, but blind to the actual fact that the dominant issue was in the
conflict between the democracy of the Duma and the autocracy of Czarism.

The class consciousness of the old régime was much clearer and more
intelligent. The Czar refused to receive the committee of the Duma,
appointed to make formal presentation of the address. Then, on May 12th,
Goremykin, the Prime Minister, addressed the Duma, making answer to its
demands. On behalf of the government he rebuked the Duma for its
unpatriotic conduct in a speech full of studied insult and contemptuous
defiance. He made it quite clear that the government was not going to grant
any reforms worthy of mention. More than that, he made it plain to the
entire nation that Nicholas II and his bureaucracy would never recognize
the Duma as an independent parliamentary body. Thus the old régime answered
the challenge of the Duma.

For seventy-two days the Duma worked and fought, seventy-two days of
parliamentary history for which there is no parallel in the annals of
parliamentary government. For the sake of the larger aims before it, the
Duma carried out the demands of the government that it approve certain
petty measures placed before it for the formality of its approval. On the
other hand, it formulated and passed numerous measures upon its own
initiative and demanded that they be recognized as laws of the land. Among
the measures thus adopted were laws guaranteeing freedom of assemblage;
equality of all citizens before the law; the right of labor organizations
to exist and to conduct strikes; reform of judicial procedure in the
courts; state aid for peasants suffering from crop failure and other
agrarian reforms; the abolition of capital punishment. In addition to