calling of the Estates-General, a representative body of the three estates of France, last called in 1615. Further debate on representation and taxation and led to the submission of the so-called Cahiers de Doléances , petitions that outlined topics for debate in the Estates-General. These cahiers were not dominated by revolutionary fervour, but rather of representation, equality of taxation, the creation of a constitution and the abolition of serfdom. 139 In contrast, Russia too experimented with cahier -like petitions in 1905, largely dominated by the desire for a legislative assembly, the Duma. 140 These petitions failed to rouse even a legislative assembly from out of Tsarist autocratic hands; the petitions were dismissed on the grounds of being too revolutionary. As such, the Russian experience of the public sphere and of representative governance was much lacking by 1905, although an easily pacified advisory Duma was established. Workers took to the streets and strikes were frequent, only to be put down by the tragic events of Bloody Sunday: violence had yet again prevailed. In the interim, the issues of Bolshevik militancy compiled and were agitated still by another calamitous violent affair, the First World War. Soldiers returning from the front in 1917 provided weaponry and military experience in the February Revolution and subsequent October Revolution. Populist and Bolshevik we thought the measures proper, and that we could not think of new taxes unless we knew the returns of expenditure and the plans of economy”; Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, as printed in William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution , (1989), p. 72. 139 George V. Taylor, “Revolutionary and Nonrevolutionary Content the Cahiers of 1789: An Interim Report” in French Historical Studies, 7.4, (Autumn, 1972), pp. 476-502, p. 497-499. 140 Andrew Verner, “Discruive Strategies in the 1905 Revolution: Peasant Petitions from Vladimir Province” in The Russian Review , 54.1, (Jan., 1995), pp. 65-90.
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