It is not necessary to dwell upon the work of the Third Duma.  This is not a history of Russia, and a detailed study of the servile parliament of Nicholas II and Stolypin would take us too far afield from our special study—­the revolutionary movement.  Suffice it, therefore, to say that some very useful legislation, necessary to the economic development of Russia, was enacted, and that, despite the overwhelming preponderance of reactionaries, it was not an absolutely docile body.  On several occasions the Third Duma exercised the right of criticism quite vigorously, and on two or three occasions acted in more or less open defiance of the wishes of the government.  A notable instance of this was the legislation of 1909, considerably extending freedom of religious organization and worship, which was, however, greatly curtailed later by the Imperial Council—­and then nullified by the government.

The period 1906-14 was full of despair for sensitive and aspiring souls.  The steady and rapid rise in the suicide-rate bore grim and eloquent testimony to the character of those years of dark repression.  The number of suicides in St. Petersburg increased during the period 1905-08 more than 400 per cent.; in Moscow about 800 per cent.!  In the latter city two-fifths of the suicides in 1908 were of persons less than twenty years old!  And yet, withal, there was room for hope, the soul of progress was not dead.  In various directions there was a hopeful and promising growth.  First among these hopeful and promising facts was the marvelous growth of the Consumers’ Co-operatives.  After 1905 began the astonishing increase in the number of these important organizations, which continued, year after year, right up to the Revolution of 1917.  In 1905 there were 4,479 such co-operatives in Russia; in 1911 there were 19,253.  Another hopeful sign was the steadily increasing literacy of the masses.  Statistics upon this point are almost worthless.  Russian official statistics are notoriously defective and the figures relating to literacy are peculiarly so, but the leaders of Russian Socialism have attested to the fact.  In this connection it is worthy of note that, according to the most authentic official records, the number of persons subscribing to the public press grew in a single year, from 1908 to 1909, fully 25 per cent.  Education and organization were going on, hand in hand.

Nor was agitation dead.  In the Duma the Socialist and Labor parties and groups, knowing that they had no chance to enact their program, made the Duma a rostrum from which to address the masses throughout the nation.  Sometimes, indeed, the newspapers were forbidden to print their speeches, but as a rule they were published, at least by the liberal papers, and so disseminated among the masses.  In these speeches the Social Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Laborites, and more daring of the Constitutional Democrats mercilessly exposed the bureaucracy, so keeping the fires of discontent alive.