Saint Petersburg City Duma Saint Petersburg City Duma Saint Petersburg City Duma was established in 1785 in the course of Catherine the Great's municipal reform. Emperor Paul replaced it by the so-called Ratusha, but his son, Alexander I, had the Duma restored four years later. The next emperor, Nicholas I, expanded the institution from six to twelve members in 1846. Alexander II of Russia reorganized it once again during the Zemstvo reform of the 1870s. In September 1918 the Duma was abolished and its functions devolved on the Petrograd Soviet. The Neoclassical headquarters of the Duma were erected on the main city avenue, Nevsky
State Duma (Russian Empire) the army; the war could be won. For the Octobrists and the Kadets, who were the liberals in the parliament, Rasputin, and his support of autocracy and absolute monarchy, was one of their main obstacles. The politicians tried to bring the government under control of the Duma. "To the Okhrana it was obvious by the end of 1916 that the liberal Duma project was superfluous, and that the only two options left were repression or a social revolution." On 19 November Vladimir Purishkevich, one of the founders of the Black Hundreds, gave a speech in the Duma. He declared the