DUMA

DUMA. The duma was the main institution of government in Russia from the fourteenth century to the 1690s. Often referred to as the "Boyars' Duma" by modern historians, it was called either "duma" or "the boyars" in contemporary sources. It lacked any formal attributes of an institution beyond the name, though custom maintained it at the center of government under the monarch for some four hundred years. The duma was the forum in which the boyar elite of the Moscow principality and later Russia influenced decision making and policy, and its history was closely bound up with the history of that elite.

The origins of the duma seem to lie in the fourteenth century, when the Moscow princes met frequently with the major landholders and warriors of the Moscow principality. Usually six to ten in number, they came from the major aristocratic clans and received the rank of boyar, a designation of honor and status, not administrative or military function. These numbers remained roughly constant until the end of the fifteenth century, when the numbers expanded slightly and a few received the rank of okol'nichii, a sort of junior boyar rank. Most boyars were untitled, but a few princes who moved to Moscow, such as the princes Patrikeev from Lithuania, received boyar rank in addition to their princely title. At the end of the fifteenth century and during the early sixteenth century, a number of princely clans from formerly independent princedoms entered the duma, joining the older families of untitled Moscow boyars.

There were no written rules that governed accession to boyar rank, but historians have reconstructed the governing principles from practice. In theory the prince could appoint anyone to the duma, but in reality he chose from among a relatively small number of aristocratic clans. Though the older males in the clan were normally chosen, not all senior males received the rank. Succession was collateral, that is, a given boyar's brother would acquire the rank ahead of the boyar's son. This meant that the operative family unit was really the aristocratic clan, not just a single lineage. The boyars and the state kept careful genealogical records and also records of service to the grand prince. These were necessary to maintain the system of precedence ranking (Mestnichestvo), which theoretically determined where boyars as well as lesser officials and landholders stood in the service hierarchy. The basic rule of precedence ranking was that a man could not serve at a lower position than his male ancestors. The system was necessarily complex and led to many disputes. From the time of Ivan IV the Terrible (ruled 1533–1584) onwards, tsars increasingly had to suspend precedence ranking during military campaigns.

By the middle of the sixteenth century, the duma grew to some forty boyars and fifteen junior boyars. Most of these were great men, with large estates and luxurious houses, the great commanders of the army, and holders of most of the important administrative and court offices. Wherever their origins, their life now centered on Moscow and the court. They maintained estates around the capital, their houses were in or near the Kremlin, and when in Moscow they were in virtually daily attendance at court. Around them were lesser men who also had landed estates and made up the bulk of the tsar's army, holding the rank of Moscow gentleman. Still further down the ladder were the gentry who served in the army and elsewhere from provincial towns. From the middle of the sixteenth century, alongside the boyars the tsar appointed one or two of the chancellery secretaries to the rank of "duma secretary" as well as one or two of the Moscow gentlemen to the rank of "duma gentleman."

We know very little of the formal procedure of the duma. It met in the main room (the "Golden Hall") of the Kremlin palace. Its proceedings were never written down and in the seventeenth century were considered secret. Historical evidence of its actions comes from narrative sources and from laws with the formula: "the tsar decreed and the boyars assented." In the seventeenth century most legislation on taxation and other internal issues bore this formula, while military decisions were simply a matter of the tsar's decree. The duma also devoted much time to foreign policy, and indeed until 1667 the head of the ambassadorial office was not usually a boyar but a secretary, with the boyars retaining a sort of collective supervision, sending committees to meet with foreign emissaries. The duma was the seat of most of the court politics of the period and was at the center of the endless and murderous factional battles of the sixteenth century, influencing the relationships of the various factions to the monarch. The princes and tsars consulted regularly with the duma (sometimes with a small group within it) and it was an essential component of the theoretical autocracy of the tsars.

The duma stood at some thirty members before 1648, then increased to about sixty-five in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. After the death of Tsar Alexis in 1676, a succession of weak rulers curried favor by granting duma rank. In 1690 there were some fifty boyars, fifty okol'nichii, forty duma gentlemen, and nine duma secretaries. Tsar Alexis had tried to regularize the meetings and assign certain days of the week to certain types of business, but this rule was hard to maintain. The abolition of precedence ranking in 1682 altered the meaning of the ranks, restricting their importance to duma service. In the 1690s Peter the Great gradually ceased to award the rank and called the duma together only infrequently. After 1700 it faded away, to be replaced by new institutions and new systems of rank.

See also Aristocracy and Gentry ; Autocracy ; Ivan IV, "the Terrible" (Russia) ; Moscow ; Peter I (Russia) ; Russia .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bogatyrev, Sergei. The Sovereign and His Councillors: Ritualised Consultations in Muscovite Political Culture 1350's–1570's. Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Toimituksia, Seria Humaniora 307. Helsinki, 2000.

Crummey, Robert O. Aristocrats and Servitors: The Boyar Elite in Russia, 1613–1689. Princeton, 1983.

Kollmann, Nancy Shields. Kinship and Politics: The Making of the Muscovite Political System, 1345–1547. Stanford, 1987.

Pavlov, A. P. Gosudarev Dvor i Politicheskaia bor'ba Pri Borise Godunove. St. Petersburg, 1992.

Paul Bushkovitch

duma , Russian name for a representative body, particularly applied to the Imperial Duma established as a result of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The parliamentary organization of 1906, largely the work of Count Witte , provided for a state council (an upper house, with some members appointed by the czar and others elected by the nobility, the zemstvos , the clergy, trade and industry, and the university faculties) and for the Duma (a lower house elected by a system of suffrage that was neither equal nor direct); no law was to be passed without the consent of the Duma. When Czar Nicholas II found that a majority of opposition candidates had been elected in 1906, he dissolved the Duma after 10 weeks. The second Duma (1907), even more hostile to the government, was also dissolved. The third Duma (1907–12) was the product of an electoral change that made it the tool of the government. It did, however, extend the peasants' rights and enact some labor laws. The fourth Duma (1912–17) had a conservative majority; called at rare and brief intervals, it was in constant conflict with the czar. It was dissolved by Nicholas in Mar., 1917 (Feb., O. S.), but refused to disband. Revolution (see Russian Revolution ) broke out, and the Duma, after electing a provisional committee, disintegrated. The committee and the Petrograd soviet appointed the provisional government. The current State Duma (est. 1993) is the popularly elected lower house of the Russia Federation's legislature.

Bibliography: See V. A. Maklakov, The First State Duma (tr. 1964); A. Levin, The Second Duma (2d ed. 1966).

Duma A Russian council or assembly. In 1906, Tsar Nicholas II became one of Europe's last autocratic rulers to concede a popular assembly, in an attempt to pacify popular opinion after the Russian Revolution of 1905. The first (10 May–22 July 1906) and the second (5 March–17 May 1907) State Dumas were quickly dissolved. A new restrictive franchise produced a more conservative majority, so that the third Duma lasted for five years (1907–12), being involved in judicial, educational, and administrative reforms. The fourth Duma, which sat until the Russian Revolutions of 1917, was less effective, particularly after the outbreak of World War I, for most of which time it was suspended. The Duma's ability to legislate much-needed reforms was constrained by a second chamber, the State Council, which was a much more conservative body.

The term was adopted for the popularly elected Russian assembly created by Yeltsin's federal Constitution of 1993. Again, it was also circumscribed by a second chamber, the Federal Council consisting of representatives of the country's component republics. The State Duma was no stronger than its predecessor, since it was constrained by the fragmentation of parties and the consequent difficulty of finding stable majorities. Moreover, its authority was strictly limited by a leader with almost authoritarian control. Under Putin, the Duma was able to reclaim some of its importance. After the elections of 1999, the majority of its MPs supported the President, and provided his policies with greater legitimacy.

Duma An elective legislative assembly introduced in Russia by NICHOLAS II in 1906 in response to popular unrest. Boycotted by the socialist parties, its efforts to introduce taxation and agrarian reforms were nullified by the reactionary groups at court which persuaded the emperor to dissolve three successive Dumas. The fourth Duma (1912–17) refused an imperial decree in February 1917 ordering its dissolution and established a provisional government. Three days later it accepted the emperor's abdication, but soon began to disintegrate.

duma [Ir., mound, tumulus, barrow]. An Irish word for burial-ground, an element in many ancient place-names, e.g. Duma na nGall [mound of the (foreign) hostages] at Tara.

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