Union of the Russian People

The Union of the Russian People was a royalist, far-right nationalist political party, the most important of the Black Hundredist monarchist organizations in the Russian Empire between 1905 and 1917. Founded in October 1905, it aimed to rally the people behind Great Russian nationalism and the Tsar, and its founding programme called for the restoration of a popular autocracy and a Russia united and indivisible. It was anti-socialist, anti-liberal and above all antisemitic, and by 1906 it counted over 300,000 members. Its paramilitary bands, the Black Hundreds, fought revolutionaries in the streets, and its leaders organized political assassinations of Duma deputies, including the murders of Mikhail Herzenstein and Grigory Iollos. It supported the State Duma only as an advisory body to the Tsar. Alexander Dubrovin led it, and it was dissolved in 1917 after the February Revolution. Historians debate whether it was an early form of fascism or a proto-fascist precursor.