Conservatives and the Parliament: State Duma Reform Projects of 1907–1917

 The article is devoted to conservative projects of reforming the State Duma, which was established in Russia in 1906. Those projects can be divided into two groups. Some projects were proposed by Russian nationalists (M.O. Menshikov, I.P. Balashov), who supported Stolypin and claimed to be one of the two main forces of the parliamentary majority. Nationalists sought to preserve the legislative powers of the Duma and stressed that the reform was supposed to strengthen parliamentarism. The projects of the nationalists proposed only partial adjustments to the parliamentary system, but still changing the Basic State Laws (in other words the coup d’état). The government did not support this path. The other projects were initiated by right-wing conservatives (L.A. Tikhomirov, K.N. Paskhalov, prince V.P. Meshchersky). Right-wing conservatives proposed turning the Duma into a legislative institution. This completely changed the political configuration and eliminated the “The Third of June” system. Both nationalist and right-wing projects were rejected by the government, albeit for different reasons: either due to their indeterminate character (nationalist projects) or due to their radicalism (right-wing projects). The ministers invariably considered the reorganization of the Duma more difficult than finding ways to cooperate with it.