Sergey Andreevich Muromtsev (russian: Серге́й Андре́евич Му́ромцев) (October 5,
O.S. 23 September">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="nowiki/>Old Style and New Style dates">O.S. 23 September1850, Saint Petersburg – October 4, 1910, Moscow) was a Russian lawyer and politician, and chairman of the First Imperial Duma in 1906.
Muromtsev was a Russian nobleman from Tula, Russia, Tula and a Professor of
Roman Law
Roman law is the law, legal system of ancient Rome, including the legal developments spanning over a thousand years of jurisprudence, from the Twelve Tables (c. 449 BC), to the ''Corpus Juris Civilis'' (AD 529) ordered by Eastern Roman emperor J ...
at
Moscow University
M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...
. In 1893, he and his wife Marya built the
Muromtsev Dacha in Moscow. In the late 19th century, he was among the creators of the Constitutional Democratic Party, better known as the KD or
Cadet
A cadet is an officer trainee or candidate. The term is frequently used to refer to those training to become an officer in the military, often a person who is a junior trainee. Its meaning may vary between countries which can include youths in ...
party, of which he was chairman for several years. In April 1906, he was elected as a representative for Moscow in the
First Duma
The State Duma, also known as the Imperial Duma, was the lower house of the Governing Senate in the Russian Empire, while the upper house was the State Council. It held its meetings in the Taurida Palace in St. Petersburg. It convened four times ...
, of which he was then elected chairman (or president) on May 10. He tried to maintain some degree of order and dignity in this difficult assembly, which is often known as the "Duma of the Public Anger".
He was much praised for the way he chaired the debates, always keeping to the strictest legality but always pursuing a constitutional and anti-
autocratic
Autocracy is a system of government in which absolute power over a state is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject neither to external legal restraints nor to regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perh ...
agenda. Despite his efforts, the Duma was dissolved on July 21, 1906, by Imperial
ukase
In Imperial Russia, a ukase () or ukaz (russian: указ ) was a proclamation of the tsar, government, or a religious leader (patriarch) that had the force of law. "Edict" and "decree" are adequate translations using the terminology and concepts ...
of
tsar
Tsar ( or ), also spelled ''czar'', ''tzar'', or ''csar'', is a title used by East Slavs, East and South Slavs, South Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word ''Caesar (title), caesar'', which was intended to mean "emperor" i ...
Nicholas II
Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Pola ...
. Muromtsev wanted the elected Duma to continue its work and proposed that it should retreat to
Finland
Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...
. For signing this appeal, he was imprisoned for some months and could not be re-elected in the later Dumas.
His funeral, at the
New Donskoy Cemetery
The New Donskoy Cemetery (Новое Донское кладбище) is a 20th-century necropolis sprawling to the south from the Donskoy Monastery in the south-west of Central Moscow. It has been closed for new burials since the 1980s.
Histo ...
on October 7, 1910, was the occasion of one of the first public demonstrations of support for constitutional ideas since the dissolution of the Duma. His niece, Vera Muromtseva, was the wife of
Ivan Bunin
Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin ( or ; rus, Ива́н Алексе́евич Бу́нин, p=ɪˈvan ɐlʲɪˈksʲejɪvʲɪtɕ ˈbunʲɪn, a=Ivan Alyeksyeyevich Bunin.ru.vorb.oga; – 8 November 1953) was the first Russian writer awarded the ...
, a celebrated Russian author.
Contributions to jurisprudence
In the 1870s, he advanced the then-novel sociological approach for the study of law, employing the functional (функционального) and historical comparative ("историко-сравнительного") methods. Muromtsev was a staunch opponent of formalism and positivism.
From 1879 to 1892, Muromtsev was the co-editor, along with
Maksim Kovalevsky
Maksim Maksimovich Kovalevsky (Russian: Максим Максимович Ковалевский; 8 September 1851 – 5 April 1916) was a Russian jurist and the main authority on sociology in the Russian Empire. He was vice-president (1895) and p ...
of the
law journal
A law review or law journal is a scholarly journal or publication that focuses on legal issues. A law review is a type of legal periodical. Law reviews are a source of research, imbedded with analyzed and referenced legal topics; they also pr ...
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