Notes

The Tsarist regime was not successful in restoring political stability to Russia between April/May 1906 and the outbreak of the war in 1914

In 1905 Russia was in a lot of danger due to the 1905 revolution and with major opposition groups brewing. This put a massive pressure on the government to stabilise the revolutionary groups, one way this was done was by the 4 Dumas through 1906 to 1917. The Dumas made Russia fairly political stable by 1914. This is because within the first Duma more than a third of the deputies were peasants. Peasants in this time were 80% of the population and despite the injustice of the land distribution and the living conditions, the peasants remained loyal to the tsar and weren't partisan. Even though the extreme left Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries did participate in the second duma, Stolypin made sure that the SD's delegates were instantly arrested and placed into exile. This made their membership was very small which resulted in little opposition therefore more political stability as they influence. Stolypin made sure that the Okhrana was very repressive so that the revolutionary groups didn’t have a big influence and the regime remained stable. Additionally, in the final duma was very complacent. In 1911 after Stolypin's assassination, the new Prime Minister Kolzovtsov thought the Duma was unimportant and overlooked it. Therefore, the influence declined and in result the Duma itself was too divided to say anything about due to the division of the parties and lack of participation.

However, there was little instability with the Duma's, in the second Duma Bolsheviks and Social Revolutionaries participated. They were very determined to ruin the Duma and to make more inside instability. But this was insignificant due to their leaders being exiled. The third Duma created a lot of instability as it proved confrontational with the government at times. Especially over Naval staff. In result of this instability, in 1911 the Octobrists had turned into the governments opposition and the Duma had to be suspended two times and the regime had to pass laws through emergency provisions. But this isn't that significant as the Duma was mainly very submissive to the government at the majority of times. For example, the Duma agreed 2,200 of 2,500 government proposals, and in 1912 it was clear that it wasn't working and the Tsar had complete control. Therefore, the tsar had restored political stability by 1914 because the Duma's were too divided and didn’t pose much of a significant threat as Nicholas II was still the tsar by 1914. With the army and the peasants still remaining very loyal, there was a lot of stability.