Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Russo-Japanese war

During the Russo-Japanese war, from 1904 to 1905, conditions in St. Petersburg were dire, with employers forcing overtime on the poorly paid workforce. A strike at the Putilov industrial plant spread, and by mid January 80,000 workers were idle and the city was without electricity or newspapers. Father Georgi Gapon, an orthodox priest who had founded a worker’s organization, announced a demonstration to the tsar’s Winter Palace in January 1905 to petition Nicholas II for an end to the war and a restoration of the eight hour working day.

Slaughter

Gapon was a highly ambiguous figure who, although in the pay of the tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, seems to have really wanted better conditions for the poor people. The protest was peaceful, with workers and wives and children carrying religious icons and singing hymns of loyalty to the tsar. Gapon’s men weeded out extremists.

As the march approached the palace, the tsar’s Imperial Guard panicked and fired into the crowd. The death toll of the shooting and crowd stampede ranged from 90 (the official figure) and 4,000 (Gapon’s estimate). Most historians believe around 1,000 died. The slaughter caused outrage, transforming the strike wave into the 1905 revolution. It also discredited the tsar’s rule and increased hatred of the regime.

Kangaroo court

Gapon fled to Switzerland, but when he returned to Russia in October, his role as a police agent was revealed and he was found hanging in a Finnish cottage after a “kangaroo court” organized by his social revolutionary comrades.