ORIGIN AND ORGANIZATION
21
In 1908, a zemstvo congress adopted statutes for an association
of all zemstvos, for the purpose of combating by common efforts fu-
ture public calamities. But this organization was joined by only
eighteen of the thirty-four provincial zemstvos.
Political Activities.
Parallel with the formation of associations of provincial zemstvos
for cultural and economic purposes, the political currents that had
become more pronounced among the zemstvos at the beginning of
the nineteenth century were also beginning to seek some common
channel. In 1903 there was formed a secret organization known as
the “Zemstvo Constitutionalists,” which the most prominent zem-
stvo workers gradually joined. Their congresses undertook to direct
the political actions of their members in the assemblies and confer-
ences of the zemstvos, which were beginning to meet quite openly,
without any government permission, at the close of 1904, taking
prompt advantage of the confusion prevailing in the domestic
policy, as a result of the defeats suffered in the Far East. The
Constitutionalists were able to secure the adoption, in most of the
provincial zemstvo assemblies, of resolutions favoring an appeal to
the Emperor in which he should be emphatically urged to abandon
autocracy for constitutional government. An appeal of this nature
was finally voted by the first All-Russian congress of zemstvos,
which met at St. Petersburg on November 6, 1904. At the end of
May, 1905, Nicholas II received a deputation from the third zem-
stvo congress, headed by Prince S. N. Trubetskoy, and listened to
their outline of a program of constitutional reforms.
It will thus be seen that the political activities of the zemstvos
played a prominent part in the revolution of 1905, which ended in
the promulgation of the Manifesto of October 17, 1905, and the con-
vocation of the State Duma.
Effects of the Revolution of 1905.
It would be an error, however, to suppose that these political
struggles made the zemstvos neglectful of their fundamental tasks.
Veselovsky, the historian of the Russian zemstvos,® shows that it was
precisely the five years from 1900 to 1905 which proved the most
*V. Veselovsky, op. cit., Vol. III.
