Reincarnated as Nikolai II - Chapter 103

Chapter 103: Return to Orbit (3)
The State Duma, which had been suppressed and crumpled for several years after the Great Purge.

As time passed, they too underwent many changes.

While they previously couldn’t even approach any area except ‘legislation’, now paths had opened for them to take important positions like deputy ministers and bureau directors in the cabinet.

Accordingly, unlike the old days when four factions shared 200 seats, the theories and ideologies advocated by the parties underwent major changes.

First, the left-wing, which had been half-extinct, was regaining strength with a ‘welfare and labor rights’ frame, whereas they used to hate the imperial state system itself.

Instead of extreme leftists like the Bolsheviks, modern leftist thought that would appear after the Soviet Union’s collapse was growing vigorously.

Meanwhile, the Bourgeois Party lost its dominance over urban elections and fell completely to minor party status.

This was partly due to changes in election laws, but mainly because workers’ taxes had increased.

The Conservative Party, successful in long-term rule, had strongly maintained its character as a ‘unified party’ gathering various right-wing groups since its early days, and faced a crisis of division due to significant internal factional fighting even today.

The State Duma was closer to Greece split into four after Alexander the Great than an American-style two-party system.

Though each party had different characteristics, they had one thing in common – none of them dreamed of constitutional monarchy anymore.

Many reasons could be attached like party character, loyalty, ideology, but simply put, the current Tsar’s reign has been unbelievably successful in retrospect.

‘Now you want us to take over the executive branch? Are you crazy, that requires capability too.’

‘Only someone like His Majesty the Tsar could raise this poor empire to this point.’

‘Constitutional monarchy? Something to shout when you want to get stoned to death in the streets.’

Why did the Russian Empire’s prosperity come in the first place?

If we had to pick just one reason, wasn’t it simply the victory in the Russo-Japanese War?

The Tsar is the one who foresaw and carried out that war from beginning to end.

No need to call for change.

Rather than going through the lengthy and complicated process of gathering public sentiment to present grievances to the Tsar, it would be more efficient to simply allow the Tsar to manage affairs directly with his existing authority and administrative apparatus. The traditional channels of power were already well-established.

No, consulting public opinion would only slow things down unnecessarily. Even the educated and politically-engaged deputies in the State Duma struggled to keep pace with the rapid social, economic, and technological transformations that had reshaped Russia over the previous two decades. The complexity of modern governance made it impractical to wait for consensus through representative bodies.

“…Ugh, this time orders came down to establish traffic laws.”

“Traffic laws? Cars are rarely seen on the streets, is it that serious?”

“Can’t we just apply the same rules as carriages?”

“If that were possible, we wouldn’t have been ordered to establish them.”

Now the Tsar passes down even legislative work if not by decree. Their workload increases day by day despite having no real power like the executive branch.

So after finally creating and somehow getting majority votes and submitting it up…

“Rejected? After we barely passed it, it’s denied?”

“What do they want us to change this time!”

“They say to reestablish the road laws first…”

“We’re neither legal scholars nor engineers, what do we know about roads to be ordered this too! I’ve never even ridden in a car!”

A phenomenon where one out of two gets rejected unfolds.

As a result, the State Duma was struggling daily to propose, research, and pass laws suitable for the empire’s rapidly changing society.

Still, they occasionally produced some achievements.

“After 9 rejections in 4 years, finally a welfare ministry is born in the empire!”

“We’re now properly a welfare state too!”

“…My God, now people won’t starve to death? Just how wealthy has this country become!”

A representative example was the birth of the first welfare ministry.

England, which had developed social welfare for a long time since the Elizabeth Poor Law of 1601, would sneer ‘You call that welfare? It’s worse than poor Ireland!’, but in Russia this was seriously unthinkable.

Nicholas also passed it thinking ‘Administrative capacity has increased now, better than dumping welfare on the church’, but it was still a huge shock to the generation that remembered the great famines of ’91 and ’92.

The state prevents starvation deaths.

“The world has really improved. No more dying from hunger.”

“We’ll never again see the days when Count Tolstoy’s short stories became popular whenever famine or drought struck.”

The social transformation that even Duma deputies couldn’t keep up with was applied to the empire’s common people in the blink of an eye.

Just living their daily lives, the newspapers inform them of how the world has changed.

“His Majesty the Tsar is like the protector and head of the Orthodox Church…”

When going to church on Sundays, Orthodox priests never stop praising the Tsar.

As life gradually becomes more bearable and the cause lies with the Tsar, naturally art and culture also begin to elevate the emperor.

“If I become a Duma deputy, I can assist His Majesty the Tsar better than anyone! Please grant me your precious vote!”

“I was an illiterate railway worker who joined the army by the Tsar’s grace, learned to read and write, and came this far! Please give me a chance to repay that grace!”

During each election cycle for the State Duma, ambitious deputies engage in an intense competition for votes, each desperately trying to outdo their rivals by professing ever-greater displays of loyalty to the Tsar and boasting of their superior administrative capabilities and legislative achievements. Their campaign speeches and public appearances become elaborate performances of devotion to the throne.

While the Tsars of Imperial Russia were already venerated as near-divine figures – ruling by divine right as God’s appointed sovereigns on earth – the current Tsar has managed to elevate his position to an even more exalted status, ascending beyond even those traditional sacred heights to achieve an almost mythological level of authority and reverence in the public consciousness.