page_title: Irakli Tsereteli
section_title: Second Duma
hierarchical_section_title: Irakli Tsereteli / Early life / Second Duma
caption_attribution_description: English: Noy Zhordaniya, georgian social demokrat, a member of the First Russian State Duma in 1906
context_page_description: Irakli Tsereteli was a Georgian politician and a leading spokesman of the Social Democratic Party of Georgia and later Russian Social Democratic Labour Party during the era of the Russian Revolutions.
  Tsereteli was born and raised in Georgia when it was part of the Russian Empire. A member of the Menshevik faction of the RSDLP, Tsereteli was elected to the Duma in 1907, where he gained fame for his oratory abilities. Shortly after entering the Duma, Tsereteli was arrested and charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Tsarist government, and exiled to Siberia. A dedicated Social Democrat who believed in the Menshevik ideology, Tsereteli was one of the leading figures of the movement in Russia. In 1915, during his Siberian exile, Tsereteli formed what would become known as Siberian Zimmerwaldism, which advocated for the role of the Second International in ending the war. He also developed the idea of "Revolutionary Defensism", the concept of a defensive war which only allowed for the defence of territory, and argued it was not being utilized.
context_section_description: Tsereteli remained in Georgia throughout the summer of 1906 recovering from his illness, and was not politically active. Even so, he was invited to stand as the Social Democratic candidate for the Russian legislative elections in January 1907, representing the Kutais Governorate, his home region. He was encouraged to do so by a fellow Georgian Menshevik, Noe Zhordania; later political opponents who disagreed on nearly every topic, Zhordania would later recall in his memoirs "that this was the only time that Irakli ever listened to me." All seven seats in Georgia were won by the Social Democrats.
  Despite being the youngest member of the Imperial Duma (at 25, the minimum age required for membership), Tsereteli took a leading role. He immediately gained recognition as a great orator. In particular he was noted for three speeches in which he outlined the Social Democrats' views and heavily criticised the government. The first speech, which opened with him stating that the "government has fettered the nation in the chains of a state emergency, which imprisons its best sons, reduces the people to beggary and fritters away the pennies collected for the hungry and destitute. Today, there spoke to us the old feudal Russia, personified by the government." It went on to call for the opposition not to work with the government regarding the agrarian reforms of Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin, stopping just short of calling for an armed insurrection.
  The speech gained Tsereteli immediate respect among his peers. He strived to unite the opposition parties, though he faced considerable opposition both from the Kadets, a liberal group who had previously opposed the government but were now more amicable to them, and the Bolsheviks (the larger faction within the RSDLP), who worked to discredit the Mensheviks in the Duma. He sought out an alliance with the other leftist factions, namely the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Trudoviks, a splinter group from the Socialist Revolutionaries. Stolypin grew increasingly tired of the opposition from the Social Democrats, and feared that his reforms would not be passed.
caption: Noe Zhordania, like Tsereteli a Georgian Menshevik. Though the two disagreed on many topics, Zhordania encouraged Tsereteli to stand for election in 1907, later stating it was the "only time that Irakli ever listened to me."
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