The Constitutional Democrats and the Jews: National Election Campaigns in Kiev Province, 1905-1912

• Author / Creator

  Melentyeva, Mariya

• This study explores a period of vibrant political life in Imperial Russia through the prism of electoral politics, a powerful modernizing force. In the early twentieth century, the empire embraced practices which transformed the power balance between the imperial centers and borderlands, with local initiative becoming an influential factor in imperial politics. The Russian Revolution of 1905 brought constitutional monarchy to multinational Imperial Russia, with almost universal male suffrage, and ushered in a new reality of mass politics. The elections to the State Duma – the first Russian parliament – and the preparation for them provided an avenue for politically active citizens of the Russian Empire to attempt to influence the future of Russia. Among them were Jews, who were restricted to reside in the Pale of Jewish Settlement in the western borderlands, but whom the election law had nevertheless enfranchised. They became important players in the national elections as candidates, political activists, and voters. Jewish support for the liberal party of Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) emerged as a prominent feature of provincial politics in the Pale. This study focuses on the multiethnic province of Kiev and examines how the Kiev Kadets developed their electoral strategies to enlist the support of local Jews. Jews joined the Kadet provincial organization in large numbers in late 1905 and early 1906 and some of them played a key role in articulating electoral strategies to mobilize Jewish support for the Kadets. This dissertation argues that electoral politics created a special realm which forced empire-wide political parties, provincial groups, and voters to raise and discuss questions of loyalties, identities, and political preferences in a modernizing empire. The measure of the Kadets’ success in Kiev province lay in their ability to pursue a policy of cooperation and agreement in an increasingly sophisticated and divisive political environment, where tensions arose between the landlords and the peasants, the Russian gentry and the Poles, the Jews and the Russian rightists, the Ukrainian socialists and the Russian nationalists, and the provincial authorities and the Kadets. In an environment of rising Russian, Jewish, and Ukrainian nationalisms and polarization of society along class lines, the Kadet-Jewish cooperation repeatedly produced results, which illustrates the potential that the liberal program enjoyed among ethnic minorities. On a broader scale, this study shows that within the legal domain, the liberals’ electoral politics in Kiev province contributed to the nascence of an increasingly sophisticated loyalties and identities within political modernization of Russia.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Jews
  • Russian Revolution
  • Miliukov
  • Kiev
  • Ethnic minorities
  • Luchitskii
  • 1905
  • Jewish Union
  • Naumenko
  • Kadet
  • Anti-Semitism
  • Zionist
  • Margolin
  • Antisemitism
  • Parliament
  • Russian Duma
  • Election campaign
  • Jewish League
  • Beilis
  • Electoral politics
  • Election
  • Pale of Jewish Settlement
  • Constitutional Democrats
  • Jewish Bund
  • Liberalism

• Graduation date

  Spring 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R35H7C87R

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.