SUMMARY:

The documents published in this section are part of the archival collection of the Special Administration for the Elections of the State Duma of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Officially, the Special Administration was formed in September 1905, but in June the ministry had already begun communicating with local officials regarding the drafts of political reform prepared and discussed in the Council of Ministers. This correspondence preceded and anticipated the creation of the Special Administration and therefore became part of its archive. The published selection of documents comprises the responses of provincial governors to requests from the Ministry of Internal Affairs for comment on the electoral law draft. Accepting in general the proposed political model, each of the governors found it necessary to request accommodations for special local interests and circumstances. The list of regions covered in the published documents incudes the provinces of Livland, Courland, Estland, Arkhangel’sk, Stavropol, and Bessarabia, as well as the Amur and Irkutsk governor-generalships, the Trans-Baikal territory (part of the Amur governor-generalship), and the Caucasian Viceroyship, for the period from 1905 to 1906.