The revolutionary terror in Russia: influence on the process and results of the Duma election campaigns (1905-1907)

The aim of this article is to trace the effect of political terror on the behavior of voters, electoral tactics of the parties participating in the first Duma election campaigns. 1905-1907 is not only the period of the First revolution in Russia, but also the first and second national elections to the State Duma. The impact of revolutionary terror on the elections in the First and Second State Dumas of the Russian Empire has not been the subject of special study in domestic and foreign historiography. The article is written based on documents that are stored in both central and local archives: the Russian State Historical Archive, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Manuscript Department of the Institute of Russian Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the State Archive of Tver Region. Most of the archival documents are first introduced into scientific use. An important source for the study of the problem is the periodicals of that time: 1) newsprint periodicals of political parties participating in the first elections to the Duma: Rech (Constitutional-Democratic Party), Golos Moskvy (The Union of October 17), Russkoe znamya, Den (The Union of Russian People), 2) the press of South-Western, Western and Central regions of the Russian Empire that suffered most from the revolutionary terror: Drug, Varshavskiy vestnik, Rizhskiy vestnik, Novoe vremya, Rossiya, Slovo, Russkoe slovo. The research uses the historical-typological method (for classification of reviews, description of articles in the press), historical-genetic, chronological, synchronous and comparative methods. On the basis of the conducted research it is possible to draw the following conclusions: revolutionary terror complicated the creation of moderate and rightist political parties and impeded the normal conduct of their election campaigns: terrorists physically eliminated their leaders, blew up bombs in the premises of electoral assemblies, destroying campaign literature. On the other hand, terror facilitated the electoral victory of the Constitutional Democrats, since the latter did not condemn the cases of revolutionary terror and the Russian society perceived them as a leftist political force. Revolutionary terror had a major influence on the behavior of the electorate, becoming one of the causes of absenteeism of voters. During the Revolution of 1905-1907 the Russian media actively shaped public opinion in regard to revolutionary terror, but could not develop a common position in condemning terror. Right-wing liberals, monarchists and governmental press actively fought against terror and tried to create a negative attitude to it in the country. However, the attitude towards terror was set by the left-liberal publications which quantitatively and qualitatively outnumbered the moderate and right print. The left-liberal press looked at revolutionary terror through the prism of the fight against "the hated state", imposing the blame for the scope of it on the government.

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