The Icon and the Axe

however, went beyond their moderate demand for a state of laws rather ' than men, insisting that the constitution of 1905 did not go far enough. In addition to demanding popular sovereignty as the prerequisite for any reform, the Miliukov brand of liberals also contended that social reform and partial agrarian redistribution were necessary concomitants of political reform. The radicalism of the Cadet party led in 1906 to the introduction of new restrictions on the activities of the second duma: the most representative national political forum that had existed in Russia since the zemsky sobers of the early seventeenth century. The Cadets had dominated the first duma, seeking in effect to turn it into a legislative body. They protested its dissolution and stated their program in even more radical terms in the Vyborg manifesto of 1906. These radical liberals continued to try to bring Russian political practices into line with those of the Western democracies with which Russia was now allied diplomatically through the triple entente. Miliukov, because of his extensive knowledge of Western practice as well as Russian history, became an increasingly important spokesman for the tradition of constitutional democracy. He was one of the few to accept-indeed claim-the title of liberal; and he was the leading figure in the agitation of the so-called progressive bloc in the last duma of 1915-16: the eleventh-hour effort of liberal reformism to seize the reins of power from the corrupt and inefficient monarchy of the last Romanov.27 The fact that the constitutional liberals were inundated by the revolutionary upheaval of March, 1917, and outlawed by the Bolshevik coup of November should not be taken as indication of any inherent Russian antipathy to liberalism. These events occurred during a war which Russia was technically ill-equipped to continue. Considering the obstacles under which liberals had been laboring in Russia, their progress had been rapid and their programs intelligently conceived. Indeed, the Bolsheviks were in many ways more fearful of the liberals than of any other group during their initial efforts to seize and consolidate power. The Cadets were among the first to be imprisoned; and the appeal of the liberal democratic idea of a constituent assembly had become so great even among the revolutionaries that the Bolsheviks were forced to permit the elections for it to take place in November, 1917. Thirty-six million Russians cast ballots; and when only one fourth voted for the Bolsheviks, the dissolution of the assembly became almost a foregone conclusion. The liberal tradition had come to Russia with too little too late. It was denounced by Lenin as "parliamentary cretinism." Miliukov and other Cadet leaders had sought to overcome the uncertainty and political inexperience of Russian liberals. But it is doubtful if even a more confident and experienced liberal party could have established constitutional

and parliamentary frameworks for evolutionary change amidst conditions of war, revolution, and social disintegration.