Подготовка окончательной редакции новых Основных законов Российской империи
Preparation of the Final Version of the New Fundamental Laws of the Russian Empire

Summary/Abstract: The article highlights such a little-studied problem as the preparation of the final version of the Fundamental State Laws on April 23, 1906, which became the first Russian constitution in force. Historiography has relatively well studied the previous stage of its creation, namely, the Meeting chaired by Nicholas II on the revision of Fundamental Laws. However, what happened then, from April 13 to April 23, at the final stage of the creation of Fundamental Laws, has not yet been included in the field of view of researchers. This is due to the fact that they did not use unique office documents that were deposited in the Russian State Historical Archive and, along with other new sources, are analyzed by the author of the article. The tsar entrusted the preparation of the final version of the draft Fundamental Laws and the Decree on their publication to M.G.Akimov, S.Y.Witte, K.I.Palen, D.M.Solsky and E.V.Frisch. Witte made the most changes to the projects, and most of these changes were conservative in nature, since the Count hoped to retain the post of Chairman of the Council of Ministers. However, Witte’s tactics turned out to be a losing one, since Nicholas II, making his own edits to the draft Fundamental Laws, focused on the counter-draft of the Fundamental Laws prepared for him informally by jurists from the Constitutional Democratic Party. As a result, the tsarist revision made the final version of the Fundamental Laws more liberal than the version of the Meeting on their revision. It was in this form that the Fundamental Laws were issued.

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