WI: Social Democrats don't boycott the first Duma

Historically the RSDRP decided, along with other radical left-wing parties, to boycott the First Duma. As a result the Duma was dominated by the Liberal Kadets and the moderate SR offshoot the Trudoviks.

This decision was not unanimous, however, and there were those within the party who called for the party to participate in the elections, albeit for very different reasons. The right-wing of the Menshevik faction, the Liquidators, wanted to move away from clandestine insurrectionist activity now that legal channels of political action were available (and I think they ultimately ran candidates), whilst the right-wing of the Bolsheviks under Lenin wanted to use the Duma as a bully pulpit to call for revolution.

If the Social Democrats decided to fully contest the elections, how many seats would they have been likely to win, how would the presence of a significantly more radical party* have affected the already quite hostile Duma, and what affect, if any, would this have on Russian politics in the near future?

* Remember this was back when Social Democrat was synonymous with revolutionary socialist
 
So if the First Duma is more radical, all that means is that it is more like the Second--which means eventually it will be dissolved and a more conservative one elected under new electoral laws. I don't often agree with Lenin but he was right to say "The boycott of the "Duma" by the Bolsheviks in 1906 was, however, a mistake, although a small and easily remediable one.* http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/LWC20.html

Actually, some Social Democrats were elected, as the Menshevik Eva Broido explained: "On the dispute over participation in the Duma elections in 1906, Eva Broido recalls how the RSDLP, in effect, stumbled into the Duma, almost unexpectedly: “The Bolsheviks were against, the Mensheviks for participation. In the end they agreed that the party should participate only in the first stage of the elections—that of the electoral colleges (there was no direct vote). In this way the party hoped to exploit the elections for the purposes of propaganda and agitation, particularly among the workers. In the event things turned out differently. Where the Mensheviks had a big majority, as in the Caucasus, the party went right through with the elections and returned several members to the Duma. In addition, several members who had been elected as independents now joined the Social Democrats. The party was thus represented in the Duma and had to define its attitude to current political events.” And she adds: “Moreover—and this was contrary to Bolshevik predictions—the Duma at once became a focus of public interest and concern, even amongst the working class. It was no longer possible simply to ignore the Duma—and we Mensheviks were convinced that we ought to make the fullest possible use of this opportunity of publicly proclaiming our socialist message to the whole country.” https://www.marxist.com/bolshevism-old/part3-2.html

For the Social Democratic members of the First Duma, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_legislative_election,_1906#/media/File:First_Duma_7.jpg and most of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_legislative_election,_1906#/media/File:First_Duma_6.jpg Note the preponderance of Georgian Mensheviks (certainly when compared to Georgia's percentage of the Empire's population!)...
 
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