an increasing role in the country's economic devel opment. But their opposition to the autocratic rule of the tsar did not go beyond the demands for civil liberties and for the establishment of a constitu tional monarchy, that is, for the curtailment of the power of the tsar and the setting up of represen tative parliamentary institutions. The leading polit ical parties of the Russian bourgeoisie-the Con stitutional Democrats (Cadets) and the Alliance of the 17th of October (Octobrists) were, as the Ca dets' leader, Pyotr Milyukov, put it, "the loyal op position of His Majesty, and not in opposition to His Majesty". When, following the publication of the Manifesto of October 17, 1905, the tsar, alarm ed by the scale of revolutionary ferment, grant ed" some democratic freedoms to the people and promised to convene a state duma (parliament) that would be vested with some legislative powers and elected on the basis of limited suffrage, these bourgeois parties to all intents and purposes rallied to the support of the regime in order to block further development of the revolutionary movement in the country. The situation in Russia, at that time the focal point of the contradictions of world imperialism and its weakest link, was aggravated by the fact that it had a multi-national population. Exploita- tion of the working people of non-Russian national ities and national groups, which made up 57 per cent of the population was especially harsh. To put an end once and for all to social, class, national and colonial oppression, it was necessary above all and the the capitalist and big-landowner system, This was that supported this system Russia: the objective of the three revolutions in ruary the first Revolution of 1905-07, the Feb Revolution of 1917, and the October Revo