Summer election campaign for the city duma in Siberia in 1917
Authors: Chudakov Oleg Valeryevich 
Published: June 2022

The article is devoted to the electoral process in the city Duma of Siberia, which took place in the summer of 1917. The author notes that the fall of autocracy and the transition of power to bourgeois democracy led to the search for new forms of organization of public administration. The revolutionary events of 1917-1918 had a noticeable impact on the existence and functioning of municipal self-government bodies in Russia. After the February Revolution of 1917, the role of the Institute of urban self-government increased markedly. Dumas in many Siberian cities have become not only the center of the association of public organizations, but also the support of the central government on the ground. Under the influence of socio-political processes, city authorities in 1917 increasingly went beyond the narrow scope of economic functions. The paper presents the desire of political forces to accumulate the socio-political interests of their urban electorate, since in the revolutionary events, the city Duma, as a self-governing body, on the one hand, and on the other the administrative authorities, found themselves in the center of events, and took the position of liberal reformism. Thus, the de facto powers of the city self-government bodies were expanded, but de jure they remained unchanged. In reality, their influence has increased, including on the formation of public opinion. The author, relying on the legislative acts of the Provisional Government, minutes of meetings of city dumas and administrations, conducted his research and tried to recreate a concrete historical picture of the political life of Siberian cities in the inter-revolutionary period. In this regard, the politicization of city self-government bodies is traced, which reached its maximum in 1917, expressed in the election of vowels on party lists and in the identification of city dumas as a public support of the new government. The author characterizes the changes that occurred in the legal status of Siberian municipalities during the revolutionary transformations of 1917, which vividly manifested the process of transformation of the institution of central government and city self-government. The new government, represented by the Provisional Government, saw its support in the democratized system of public self-government of cities and zemstvos, and the self-government bodies, in turn, expected the Provisional Government to expand its legal framework. As the Provisional Government suggested, it was the democratized city Duma that was to become the basis of civil society. The author, analyzing the process of development of the institution of urban self-government, notes the transformation of city bodies into local state authorities, the creation of a support for a new democratic government in their person. However, in 1917, the city Duma in its renewed composition, in which many vowels had no experience of city work and were bound by party discipline, completely lost continuity with the former city government and largely turned into a political platform for party speakers. The article examines the causes, course and results of the election campaign to the city Duma in Siberia in the inter-revolutionary period. The pre-election platforms and tactical positions of political forces are analyzed, which reflect the political vicissitudes of the development of the revolutionary process in the country and the regional peculiarities of their perception by various party and social forces. It was determined that first of all on the agenda were pressing issues that had accumulated during the First World War. At the same time, the issues of a political nature caused by the events that took place in the European part of Russia were of little interest to the inhabitants of Siberian cities, which testified to the relative apolitical nature of the main part of Siberian society and a more calm, measured life in the city than in the central regions during this period.