"We impose upon the Government the obligation to carry out Our inflexible will: To grant to the population the essential foundations of civil liberty, based on the principles of genuine inviolability of the person, freedom of conscience, speech, meetings and associations. Without postponing the scheduled elections to the State Duma, to admit to participation in the Duma those classes of the population that have been until now entirely deprived of the right to vote, and to extend in the future, by the newly established legislative way, the principles of the general right of election."

Tsar Nicholas II, Imperial Manifesto, 17 October 1905. Issued at the height of the 1905 Revolution, drafted by Sergei Witte.