Bu

Bulygin Commission

Created by an imperial decree (ukase) in February 18, 1905 (i.e. in the wake of Bloody Sunday), this commission was headed by Minister of the Interior Bulygin and composed of big Russian landowners. The Commission drafted a bill for the establishment of a Russian Duma with advisory powers, and Regulations on the Duma elections. The Bill and the Regulations were made public together with the tsar's Manifesto of August 6 (19), 1905. The right to elect to the Duma was a right reserved only for landowners, capitalists, and a very small number of peasant householders. The duma would have no legislative powers and would not be allowed to discuss certain issues, but was intended to serve only as an "advisory" board to the tsar.

An active boycott of the Bulygin Duma was proclaimed by the Bolsheviks and the public was in an uproar over the purely superficial measures; elections to the 'Bulygin' Duma never took place. After the October strikes, Tsar Nicholas II conceded to giving some legislative powers to the Duma.

Bund (Bundists)

The General Jewish Workers' Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia was organised in 1897 at the inaugural congress the Jewish Social-Democratic groups in Vilna. It was an association mainly of petty-bourgeois Jewish artisans of Russia's western regions.

During the First World War (1914-18) the Bundists took a social-chauvinist stand. In 1917 the Bund came out in support of the Russian Provisional Government. During the foreign military intervention and civil war in Russia, the group's leaders aided the white armies, though the members of the union were agitating in favour of collaboration with the Soviet government. In March 1921 the Bund concluded to dissolve itself and some of its members joined the Russian Communist Party.