The Russian Duma: priest deputies and officers. From White Nights and Other Russian Impressions by Arthur Ruhl. Ruhl reported from Russia in 1917 after the February Revolution.
Priest deputies to the Duma strolling beside the lake adjoining Taurida Palace.A group of 'Pristavs,' who acted as ushers, vote collectors, etc. in the national Duma.
"During January at least three separate centers of agitation against the Czar began to take shape in Petrograd. There was the Union of Nobles, an organization of the aristocracy which was plotting for a palace revolution. There were the political parties of the extreme left, chiefly the Social Democrats, forever eating away underground, like white ants, inside the factories and the armed services. And there was the Duma itself. Through all three groups the Okhrana coiled itself like some parasitical creeper that flourishes best where it can generate rottenness and decay."
A somewhat overwrought description of the groups plotting against Russian Tsar Nicholas II in the capital of Petrograd in January, 1917. Members of the aristocracy and the Russian Duma had killed the monk Rasputin at the end of December, a blow that struck at the heart of the royal family.
The Russian Revolution by Alan Moorehead, page 134, copyright © 1958 by Time, Inc., publisher: Carroll and Graf, publication date: 1989
1917-01-30, 1917, January, Petrograd, Duma, Russian Duma, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsar Nicholas, Nicholas II, Nicholas