The first Duma opened on 27 April 1906 with roughly 500 deputies. Many radical left parties, such as the Socialist Revolutionary Party had boycotted the election, leaving the moderate Constitutional Democrats aka The Kadets with the most deputies. Second came an alliance of slightly more radical left wing parties, the Trudoviks, with around 100 deputies. To the right of both were a number of smaller parties, including the Octobrists. Together, they had around 45 deputies. Other deputies, mainly from peasant groups, were independent.
The Duma ran between April and June 1906, with limited success. The Tsar and Prime Minister Ivan Goremykin were eager to keep order however, and reluctant to share power. Meanwhile, the Duma on the other hand wanted continuing reform, including electoral reform and most prominently, land reform. The Tsar dissolved the Duma on July 8, the same day Pyotr Stolypin was named as the new Prime Minister, because of fears of this Liberal attitude.
Frustrated by this, Paul Miliukov and around 200 deputies mostly from the liberal Kadets party suddenly departed to Vyborg. Then part of Russian Finland, to discuss the way forward. As a result of this, they issued the Vyborg Appeal, in which called for civil disobedience. This was largely ignored and therefore resulted in the party’s arrest and exclusion from future Duma elections. This reason as well as others, resulted in a plan for a makeup of a second Duma to amend things. As this Duma only lasted such a short time, it did not have much effect in any way, therefore could be classed as a “rubber stamp assembly”.
The Second Duma went from February 1907 to June 1907, and was equally short-lived. The Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, and the Socialist Revolutionaries all abandoned their policies of boycotting elections to the Duma, and as a result of this they both won a number of seats. The Kadets, by this point the most moderate party, found themselves outnumbered by double by their more reactionary counterparts. With this in mind, Stolypin and the Duma could not build a working relationship, being divided on the issues of land confiscation, which the socialists and, to a lesser extent, the Kadets, supported but the Tsar and Stolypin severely opposed, and Stolypin’s brutal attitude towards law and order.
On 1st June 1907, Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin accused SD’s in preparation of armed uprising and demanded the Duma to exclude 55 SD’s from Duma sessions and strip 16 of them from parliamentary immunity. When this decision was rejected by Duma, it was dissolved on 3rd June 1907, by an imperial decree in what became known as the Coup of June 1907.
The Tsar was unwilling to have rid of the system of the State Duma, despite its problems. Rather, using emergency powers, Stolypin and the Tsar changed the electoral law and gave greater electoral value to the votes of landowners and owners of city properties. Therefore to balance this out, less value of vote was allowed for peasantry, whom he classed as being misled, in the process breaking his own Fundamental Laws.
This Second Duma did not last very long, however the Tsar wanted to uphold the powers of the Duma leading to the assumption it meant something to him, and it was not a step of just going through the motions like the October Manifesto concessions had suggested. There was beginning to be more meaning to things.
The third Duma which lasted from 1907–1912 was dominated by gentry, landowners and businessmen. All of the higher classes, this system worked a lot better and more efficiently, cooperation between the Government and the Duma was a lot better, consequently the Duma lasted a full five year term, and successfully decided on 200 pieces of legislation and voted on the large amount of 2500 bills. Due to its more noble, and Great Russian composition, the third Duma, was given a nickname, "The Duma of the Lords and Lackeys" or "The Master's Duma". The Octobrists party were the largest, with around one-third of all the deputies.
In terms of legislation, the Duma supported an improvement in Russia's military capabilities, as well as Stolypin's plans for land reform and basic social welfare measures. The power of Nicholas' hated land captains was consistently reduced. It also supported more regressive laws, however, such as on the question Russification, with a fear of the Empire breaking up being imminent. Stolypin was assassinated in September 1911 and replaced by his Finance Minister Vladimir Kokovtsov.