Editing Constitutional Democratic Party (section)

== Parliamentary opposition (1906–1917) ==
When the [[State Duma (Russian Empire)#Second Duma|Second Duma]] was convened on 20 February 1907, the Kadets found themselves in a difficult position. Their leadership was not represented in the Duma after the Vyborg Manifesto fiasco and their numbers were reduced to about 100. Although still the largest faction in the Duma, they no longer dominated the parliament and their attempts to concentrate on lawmaking were frustrated by radicals on the left and on the right who saw the Duma as a propaganda tool. Although the Kadets had moderated their position in the Second Duma, they refused to vote in May 1907 for a resolution denouncing revolutionary violence which gave the government of [[Pyotr Stolypin]] a pretext to dissolve the Second Duma on 3 June 1907 and change the electoral law to drastically limit the representation of leftist and liberal parties.

Due to the changes in the electoral law, the Kadets were reduced to a relatively small (54 seats) opposition group in the [[State Duma (Russian Empire)#Third Duma|Third Duma]] (1907–1912). Although excluded from the more important Duma committees, the Kadets were not entirely powerless and could determine the outcome of certain votes when allied with the centrist Octobrist faction against right-wing nationalist deputies. With the revolution crushed by 1908, they moderated their position even further as they voted to denounce revolutionary violence, no longer sought confrontation with the government and concentrated on influencing legislation whenever possible. By 1909, Miliukov could claim that the Kadets were now "the opposition of His Majesty, not the opposition to His Majesty", which caused only moderate dissent among the left-leaning faction of the party.

Although the Kadets, allied with the Progressive faction and the Octobrists, were able to push some liberal bills (religious freedoms, freedom of the press and of the labor unions) through the Duma, the bills were either diluted by the upper house of the parliament or vetoed by the tsar. The failure of their legislative program further discredited the Kadets' strategy of peaceful change through gradual reform.

In 1910, the government rekindled its pre-revolutionary [[Russification]] campaign in an attempt to restrict minority rights, notably drastically curtailing Finland's autonomy. Most Kadets were opposed to these policies and allied with the left-wing of the Octobrists tried to blunt them as much as possible, but they were unsuccessful. However, a minority of Kadets headed by [[Pyotr Struve]] supported a moderate version of Russification, which threatened to split the party. With the increase in popular discontent after the [[Lena massacre]] on 4 April 1912 and a continuous decline in party membership after 1906, the rift in the party became more pronounced. Kadet leaders on the left like Central Committee member [[Nikolai Vissarionovich Nekrasov]] argued that the Duma experience had been a failure and that "constructive work" was pointless under an autocratic government. Kadet leaders on the right like Central Committee members [[Vasily Maklakov]], [[Mikhail Chelnokov]], [[Nikolai Gredeskul]] and [[Ariadna Tyrkova-Williams]]{{citation needed|date=March 2011}} argued for a shift to the right. The disagreements were temporarily put aside in July 1914 at the outbreak of [[World War I]] when the Kadets unconditionally supported the government and found an outlet for their energies in various kinds of relief work under the umbrella of the All-Russian Union of Zemstvos and the All-Russian Union of Cities.

Once the initial outburst of national unity feelings died down in mid-1915 as Russian retreat from [[Galicia (Central Europe)|Galicia]] showed the government's incompetence, the Kadets, together with the Progressive faction, the Octobrist faction and a part of the Nationalist faction in the Duma, formed the [[Progressive Bloc (Russia)|Progressive Bloc]] in August 1915 which was critical of the government's prosecution of the war and demanded a government of "popular confidence". As Russia's defeats in the war multiplied, the Kadets' opposition became more pronounced, culminating in Miliukov's speech in the Duma in October 1916 when he all but accused government ministers of treason.