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| 1906, May 2 |
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| Nicholas dismissed Witte, of whom he had never approved and who, he felt, was no longer needed. In his place the tsar appointed Ivan Goremykin, a conservative bureaucrat of the old school. | 1 |
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| May 6 |
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| Nicholas promulgated the Fundamental Laws, issued on the very eve of the Duma's first meeting. These extensive regulations decided in advance many of the questions left open by the October Manifesto. The tsar was proclaimed autocrat and retained complete control over the executive office, the armed forces, and foreign policy. Changes in the Fundamental Laws could be made only with his consent. The legislative power was to be divided between the Duma and an upper chamber, the Imperial Council, half of whose members were to be appointed by the tsar, the other half to be elected by various privileged bodies throughout the country. The government reserved the right to legislate by decree when the Duma was not in session. The budgetary powers of the Duma were closely restricted. | 2 |
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| May 10 |
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| The FIRST DUMA, elected by what amounted to universal suffrage, convened. But the radical parties had, for the most part, boycotted the elections, and the Cadets formed the largest party. Profoundly disappointed by the Fundamental Laws, the Cadets criticized the government violently, and this first representative assembly ended in deadlock. | 3 |
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| July 21 |
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| Nicholas dissolved the first Duma. The Cadet leaders adjourned to Viborg and issued the Viborg Manifesto, calling upon the country to refuse taxes. The manifesto found but little response in the country, where the revolution was already a thing of the past. | 4 |
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| Nov |
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| Agrarian reform act of Peter Stolypin, who had become prime minister in June. Though a conservative, Stolypin was far from being a reactionary. He was eager to maintain the constitutional system and hoped gradually to wean the country from revolutionary sentiment by well-planned reforms. The Agrarian Law put an end to the communal (mir) system of landholding and enabled each peasant to withdraw from the commune at will, receiving his own share of the land in private ownership. Any commune was able to end the old system by majority vote. This law was later approved by the third Duma. Under the Stolypin reforms, a group of business-minded peasants emerged, fostering commercial agriculture but disturbing traditional village relations. | 5 |
| In a similar effort at conciliation, unions were allowed, but exclusively on the local, not national, level. | 6 |
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