The beginning of the 20th century was marked for the Russian Empire by a stormy social and political movement among the masses, among the intelligentsia, even large magnates were dissatisfied with the current political and economic situation, which was revealed during the revolution of 1905-1907. One of its most important achievements can be safely called political pluralism. And one of its manifestations was the party of the Octobrists.
Background of the formation of the Octobrists
Even in the period after the liberal reforms of the nineteenth century, movements and political circles of a liberal nature began to appear in Russia, all of them were very diverse and were not systemic. The active development of capitalist relations after 1861 led to a powerful industrial revolution. The new class of owner-owners becomes more and more significant. In the course of bourgeois revolutions and reforms, the bourgeoisie came to power in almost all European countries. Substantial changes have occurred in political systems; general suffrage, an independent court, different methods of political action, which cannot be said about Russia. In fact, the bourgeoisie was deprived of the opportunity to influence political decisions in any way, which, of course, did not suit Russian industrialists at all.
The formation of the Octobrist party
Among the Russian liberals, as already noted above, there was no unity, and gradually a disengagement began between them, which escalated and ended already as a result of the revolutionary events of the beginning of the last century. On October 17, 1905, the emperor signs a manifesto on changing the political foundations of the Russian Empire. So the party of the Octobrists appeared. It mainly consisted of large businessmen, merchants, landowners, immediately supported the royal manifesto and believed that the revolution had achieved its goals. The Octobrists' Party took the side of the government camp and no longer supported revolutionary slogans. The leader of the Octobrist party, A. I. Guchkov, came from a family of peasants, at the end of the 19th century he took up financial activities and soon his success allowed him to take the post of chairman of the board of the merchant bank of Moscow. His position in the reform of Russian political reality was very moderate and boiled down to an evolutionary change in the social system.
Party program October 17
The Octobrists Party put forward its own program for the reorganization of Russia. Its main provisions were:
- Preserving the unity and indivisibility of Russia in the form of a constitutional monarchy.
- Equal suffrage.
- Guarantees of observance of civil rights.
- Establishment of a state land fund to help small-scale farms.
- An independent and fair court.
- Development of the national education system, transport system.
The Russian middle bourgeoisie and the Octobrists party did not get along at all, this is evidenced by the emergence of a commercial and industrial party, which in itself concentrated the bulk of the middle layers of Russian society. Over the years, the wrong tactical struggle with opponents, and later rolling down in their views to the radical monarchists, did not allow her to take any important positions. This political party (the Octobrists) disappears from the political arena in 1917.