The Union of the Russian People (URP; , СРН/SRN) was a royalist far-right nationalist political party, the most important among Black-Hundredist monarchist political organizations in the Russian Empire between 1905 and 1917. Since 2005, organizational cells of the Union have been undergoing a revival in Russia and Ukraine.
Founded in October 1905, its aim was to rally the people behind Great Russian nationalism and the Tsar, espousing anti-socialist, anti-liberal, and above all antisemitic views. By 1906, it had over 300,000 members. Its paramilitary armed bands, called the Black Hundreds, fought revolutionaries violently in the streets. Its leaders organised a series of political assassinations of deputies and other representatives of parties which supported the Russian Revolution of 1905, most notably the murders of Mikhail Herzenstein and Grigory Iollos, both Kadet Duma deputies, responsibility for which was later acknowledged by URP leader Nikolai Markov.
The Union was dissolved in 1917 in the wake of the February Revolution, and its leader, Alexander Dubrovin, was placed under arrest and died under mysterious circumstances. Some modern academic researchers view the Union of the Russian People as an early example of fascism, while others treat it as a proto-fascist precursor that ultimately fell short of that designation.
Ideology and political views Fascism, nationalism and scholarly debate Historians have debated the extent to which the Union of the Russian People anticipated the fascist movements of inter-war Europe. Orlando Figes describes it as "an early Russian version of the Fascist movement": anti-liberal, anti-socialist and above all antisemitic, it spoke of restoring a "popular autocracy" which it claimed had existed before Russia was taken over by "the Jews and intellectuals". As with the fascist movements of inter-war Europe, the URP drew its mass support chiefly from those who had either lost, or feared losing, their petty status as a result of modernisation and reform: uprooted peasants drawn into the towns as casual labourers, small shopkeepers and artisans squeezed by big business, and low-ranking officials and policemen threatened by new democratic institutions.
Stanley Payne, however, cautions against too direct an identification with fascism. He characterises the URP as combining "authoritarian monarchism and a vague corporatism with some effort at mass mobilisation and nominal social reform", based above all on "an appeal to traditional religiosity of an obscurantist sort". It emphasised strong-arm units (the Black Hundreds) more than any contemporary western European rightist group, and was extreme in its "semiracial anti-Semitism and support of the new style of Russian nationalist imperialism". Russia before 1914, Payne argues, was "too underdeveloped to harbour all the stimuli and forces which would soon bring fascism to life in central Europe", and though the URP was "moving in the direction of fascism, [it] was as yet very far from reaching this indistinct goal".
The URP's nationalism was explicitly Great Russian in character. Its first declared aim was "a Great Russia, United and Indivisible", and its nationalism was rooted in racism and xenophobia: the supremacy of the Great Russians was to be defended throughout the Empire.
Government and administration The Union of the Russian People called for the 'restoration of the popular autocracy', a concept they believed had existed before Russia had been taken over by 'intellectuals and Jews'. Its founding programme declared "a durable unity of the Russian people of all classes and professions to work for the general good of our fatherland — a Russia united and indivisible", a phrase that captured the Union's rejection of any federalism or national autonomy within the Empire. The Statute described the Duma not as a legislative body but as one whose role was solely to "inform [the Tsar] of the real needs of the people and of the state", explicitly forbidding it from placing any "limitations on the supreme authority of the Tsar". The establishment of the State Duma by Nicholas II was interpreted by the Union's ideologists as the restoration of moral and religious unity between the tsar and his subjects through providing representatives of Orthodox peasants with ability to act as counselors to the monarch. Supporting the Duma in this limited sense, the Union opposed the rule of bureaucracy, which its leaders claimed to be controlled by "non-Russian elements".
The Union's political program in the 1906 elections to the Russian State Duma envisioned the provision of equal rights and duties to Cossacks of Poltava, Kiev, Chernigov and Bessarabia Governorates with members of other Cossack hosts. This could be interpreted as a call for the restoration of the Cossack stratum in Ukrainian lands with the goal of using it against Catholic and Polish influences. Local branches of the Union supported Cossack autonomy of the Don and condemned the government's policy in respect to peripheral regions of the empire, such as Siberia, which they saw as promoting economic exploitation by foreign capitalists to the detriment of the local population.
Religion and society According to its 1906 statute, the Union saw the protection of Orthodoxy, preservation of Autocracy and defense of Nationality as its main goals. While declaring that "all subjects of the Empire have the freedom of religious worship", it firmly stated that "the Orthodox faith remains steadfastly the official religion of the Russian Empire". It supported the reestablishment of Moscow Patriarchy and provisional of canonical self-government to the Russian Orthodox Church. Members of the Union opposed the freedom of religion, lobbied a ban on attending Catholic churches for the Orthodox and supported the introduction of anathema for converts into Catholicism, restoration of Orthodox brotherhoods and other measures directed against the Catholic Church.
On the local level, the Union's activists cooperated with the Orthodox Church, promoting conservative public morals, working to preserve the social order and supporting elements of local self-government. As part of these policies, in some locations members of Orthodox parishes were banned from trading on Christian holidays and having common business with Jews; local activists of the Union campaigned against the consumption of alcohol and prevented the organization of khorovods, vechornytsi and similar events; special peasant patrols were organized to combat thievery, frequently with the use of corporal punishment.
National minorities
The Union was the leading exponent of antisemitism in the wake of the 1905 Revolution. Its founding programme and statute codified this antisemitism in concrete institutional terms: Jews were explicitly barred from membership in the Union "even if they had accepted Christianity", and the programme proposed that the entire Jewish population of the Russian Empire be permitted to elect no more than three deputies to the State Duma, justified by what it described as the "disruptive, anti-state activity of the united Jewish masses". Its leaders further opposed what they saw as economic domination of the Orthodox majority by Jews, and some went as far as to propose the resettlement of all Jews to Palestine. Antisemitism was brought into the URP by what became the organisation's ideological core, chairman Alexander Dubrovin, Vladimir Purishkevich, Pavel Krushevan, Pavel Bulatsel and some other 'radical temperament anti-Semitic rabble-rousers', who had seceded from the Russian Assembly. The methods of the Union were not what the Russian Assembly considered proper conduct.
The Union actively campaigned against Ukrainian self-determination and in particular, against the 'cult' of the popular Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.ПАНИХИДЫ ПО Т. ШЕВЧЕНКЕ И ЧЕРНОСОТЕННОЕ ДУХОВЕСТВО. Украинская Жизнь. — М., 1912. — № 5 — С. 82. At the same time, the organization's leaders in ethnic Ukrainian lands, most notably archbishop Antony Khrapovitsky, tended to oppose ethnic nationalism in favour of a broader identity based on the Orthodox Christian faith. The Union's activists in Ukraine published part of their press in the Ukrainian language and used the memory about Cossacks, elements of Ukrainian folk culture and works by prominent Ukrainian authors, including Shevchenko, as parts of their propaganda.
Economy In economic matters, the Union promoted the purchase of lands from feudal owners by the state in order to sell them to poorer peasants on an affordable price. Some representatives of the Union in the State Duma went as far as to demand free provision of land to peasants, which greatly increased the party's popularity. The Statute explicitly stated that the Union would advocate that "poor peasants be given more land" and called for a broad programme of agricultural education to improve the productivity of Russian farming. Papers published by the Union also worked to provide the rural population with information on modern agricultural techniques. In order to fight against supposed Jewish domination, the Union promoted boycotting of businesses owned by Jews and supported the creation of cooperatives.
History Creation The Union of the Russian people was by far the most important of the extreme rightist groups formed in the wake of the 1905 Revolution. It was founded in October 1905 as a movement to mobilise and rally the masses against the Left. Initiative for its creation is attributed to three figures: physician Alexander Dubrovin, artist Apollo Maikov, and Hegumen Arseny (Alexeyev). The creation of the movement was personally approved by Emperor Nicholas II.
1905–1906 Five days after the proclamation of the October Manifesto on , Purishkevich, Apollo Apollonovich Maikov (son of poet Apollon Maykov), Pavel Bulatzel, Baranov, Vladimir Gringmut and some others gathered at Dubrovin's home. At this meeting, they concurred with Dubrovin's idea to set up a political organization (Dubrovin opposed to calling it a party). In a couple of weeks initiators worked out an organisational structure, devised a program, and on formally announced the founding of the Union of the Russian People. Dubrovin was elected its chairman.
The Union's Manifesto expressed a 'plebeian mistrust' of every political party, as well as the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia. The group looked at these as obstacles to 'the direct communion between the Tsar and his people'. This struck a deep chord with Nicholas II, who also shared the deep belief in re-establishment of autocratic personal rule, as had existed in the Muscovite state of the 1600s. It also stood for the russification of non-Russian citizens. The charter was adopted in August 1906.
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