Grandfather of the Maidan. Who was behind the events of Bloody Sunday? How it all started
"Bloody Sunday" January 9 (22), 1905...In 1905-1907, events took place in Russia, which were later called the first Russian revolution. The beginning of these events is considered to be January 1905, when the workers of one of the St. Petersburg factories entered the political struggle.
Back in 1904, a young priest of the St. Petersburg transit prison, Georgy Gapon, with the assistance of the police and city authorities, created in the city a working organization "Assembly of Russian Factory Workers of St. Petersburg." In the first months, the workers simply arranged general evenings, often with tea, dancing, and opened a mutual benefit fund. By the end of 1904, about 9 thousand people were already members of the "Assembly". In December 1904, one of the masters of the Putilov factory fired four workers who were members of the organization. The "assembly" immediately came out in support of the comrades, sent a delegation to the director of the plant, and, despite his attempts to smooth over the conflict, the workers decided to stop work in protest. On January 2, 1905, the huge Putilov factory stopped. The strikers put forward already increased demands: to establish an 8-hour working day, to increase salaries. Other metropolitan factories gradually joined the strike, and a few days later 150,000 workers were on strike in St. Petersburg.
G. Gapon spoke at meetings, calling for a peaceful procession to the tsar, who alone could stand up for the workers. He even helped prepare an appeal to Nicholas II, in which there were such lines: “We have become impoverished, we are oppressed, .. people do not recognize us, they treat us like slaves ... No more strength, Sovereign ... That terrible moment has come for us, when death is better than the continuation of unbearable torments. Look without anger ... at our requests, they are directed not to evil, but to good, both for us and for You, Sovereign!" The appeal listed the requests of the workers, for the first time it included demands for political freedoms, the organization of the Constituent Assembly - it was practically a revolutionary program. On January 9, a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace was scheduled. Gapon assured that the tsar should go out to the workers and accept an appeal from them.
On January 9, about 140,000 workers took to the streets of St. Petersburg. The columns headed by G. Gapon went to the Winter Palace. The workers came with their families, children, festively dressed, they carried portraits of the king, icons, crosses, sang prayers. Throughout the city, the procession met armed soldiers, but no one wanted to believe that they could shoot. Nicholas II was in Tsarskoye Selo that day, but the workers believed that he would come to listen to their requests. When one of the columns approached the Winter Palace, shots suddenly rang out. The first dead and wounded fell. 
The people who held the icons and portraits of the tsar firmly believed that the soldiers would not dare to shoot at them, but a new volley struck, and those who carried these relics began to fall to the ground. The crowd mixed up, people rushed to run, there were screams, crying, new shots. G. Gapon himself was shocked no less than the workers. 
January 9 was called "Bloody Sunday". On the streets of the capital that day, from 130 to 200 workers died, the number of wounded reached 800 people. The police ordered not to give the corpses of the dead to their relatives, they were buried secretly at night. 
The events of "Bloody Sunday" shocked the whole of Russia. The portraits of the king, previously revered, were torn and trampled. Shocked by the execution of the workers, G. Gapon exclaimed: "There is no more God, no more tsar!" In his new address to the people, he wrote: “Brothers, comrades-workers! Innocent blood has still been shed ... The bullets of the tsar’s soldiers ... shot through the tsar’s portrait and killed our faith in the tsar. So let’s take revenge, brothers, on the tsar cursed by the people ... to all the robbers of the unfortunate Russian land. Death to them all!"
Maxim Gorky, shocked no less than others by what had happened, later wrote an essay on January 9, in which he spoke about the events of that terrible day: they walked, clearly seeing the goal of the path before them, a fabulous image majestically stood in front of them ... Two volleys, blood, corpses, groans and - everyone stood before the gray emptiness, powerless, with torn hearts.
The tragic events of January 9 in St. Petersburg became the day of the beginning of the first Russian revolution, which swept all of Russia.
And now let's look at events from the other side ...
"Let's turn to the main witness of that tragedy - the former priest Gapon.
Here is what was written in the Bolshevik Iskra: “Gapon said at a meeting the day before: “If ... they don’t let us through, then we will break through by force. If the troops shoot at us, we will defend ourselves. Part of the troops will go over to our side, and then we will arrange a revolution. We'll set up barricades, we'll smash gun stores, we'll smash the prison, we'll take over the telegraph and telephone. The Socialist-Revolutionaries promised bombs ... and ours will take.
Where is the weapon from? The SRs promised.
Head of the St. Petersburg security department A. V. Gerasimov in his memoirs, referring to Gapon, he wrote that there was allegedly a plan to kill the king: “Suddenly, I asked him if it was true that on January 9 there was a plan to shoot the sovereign when he went out to the people. Gapon replied: “Yes, that’s right. It would be terrible if this plan came to fruition. I learned about it much later. It was not my plan, but Rutenberg’s… The Lord saved him…’”.
The figure of Rutenberg appears. Who is this?
Rutenberg Pinkhas Moiseevich, born in 1878, active participant in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, one of the leaders of the Zionist movement, organizer of the Jewish Legion and the American Jewish Congress. A very interesting figure.
In 1905, he was a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, on the instructions of which Rutenberg took part in the procession of workers and their families to the Winter Palace. Wasn't he, a Socialist-Revolutionary militant, shooting at soldiers and throwing bombs?
Let me remind you: “According to historians, there were those in the crowd who opened fire on the soldiers, provoking them to retaliate” ...
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Priest Georgy Gapon and mayor I. A. Fullon at the opening of the Kolomna department of the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers of St. Petersburg 
Participants of Bloody Sunday 
January 9, 1905 Cavalrymen at the Pevchesky Bridge delay the movement of the procession to the Winter Palace. 
Troops on Palace Square 
Cossack patrol on Nevsky Prospekt January 9, 1905 
Execution of a workers' procession on January 9, 1905 
Graves of the victims of Bloody Sunday 1905 
Priest George Gapon, leading the procession, was practically an instigator and provocateur of unsuspecting workers - he inspired them that the petition would certainly be accepted by the tsar, and pushed the masses to the abyss of bloodshed.
People who did not think about the revolution were thrown into the volleys of army units. Having come to their senses, the workers tried to stop the procession, but they got into pincers between the troops, the revolutionaries and the pushing masses of the rear ranks of the marchers who had not yet realized what was happening.
Gapon, who had provoked the masses, went into hiding and then fled abroad. An excited crowd smashed shops, erected barricades, attacked policemen, military officers, officers and people simply passing by in cabs. There were many killed and wounded, the numerical data on this in different sources differ very significantly.
Clashes also took place at the Narva outpost, on the Shlisselburgsky tract, Vasilevsky Island and the Vyborg side. On Vasilyevsky Island, a group of workers led by the Bolshevik L.D. Davydova seized Schaff's weapons workshop, but was expelled from there by the police.
As the immediate consequences of this event, the liberal opposition and revolutionary organizations became more active, and the first Russian revolution began.
January 9 (according to the new style, January 22) 1905 is an important historical event in the modern history of Russia. On this day, with the tacit consent of Emperor Nicholas II, a 150,000-strong procession of workers was shot in St. Petersburg, who were going to hand over to the tsar a petition signed by tens of thousands of Petersburgers asking for reforms.
The reason for organizing the procession to the Winter Palace was the dismissal of four workers of the largest Putilov plant in St. Petersburg (now the Kirov plant). On January 3, a strike of 13,000 factory workers began demanding the return of those laid off, the introduction of an 8-hour working day, and the abolition of overtime work.
The strikers created an elective commission from the workers to jointly with the administration analyze the claims of the workers. Demands were developed: to introduce an 8-hour working day, to abolish mandatory overtime work, to establish a minimum wage, not to punish strikers, etc. On January 5, the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic workers from other factories to join it.
The Putilovites were supported by the Obukhovsky, Nevsky shipbuilding, cartridge and other factories, by January 7 the strike became general (according to incomplete official data, over 106 thousand people took part in it).
Nicholas II handed over power in the capital to the military command, which decided to crush the labor movement before it turned into a revolution. The main role in suppressing the riots was assigned to the Guard, it was reinforced by other military units of the Petersburg District. 20 infantry battalions and over 20 cavalry squadrons were concentrated at predetermined points.
On the evening of January 8, a group of writers and scientists, with the participation of Maxim Gorky, turned to the ministers with a demand to prevent the execution of workers, but they did not want to listen to her.
On January 9, a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace was scheduled. The procession was prepared by the legal organization "Assembly of Russian Factory Workers of St. Petersburg" headed by priest Georgy Gapon. Gapon spoke at meetings, calling for a peaceful procession to the tsar, who alone could intercede for the workers. Gapon assured that the tsar should go out to the workers and accept an appeal from them.
On the eve of the procession, the Bolsheviks issued a proclamation "To all St. Petersburg workers", in which they explained the futility and danger of the procession conceived by Gapon.
On January 9, about 150,000 workers took to the streets of St. Petersburg. The columns headed by Gapon headed for the Winter Palace.
The workers came with their families, carried portraits of the tsar, icons, crosses, sang prayers. Throughout the city, the procession met armed soldiers, but no one wanted to believe that they could shoot. Emperor Nicholas II was in Tsarskoye Selo that day. When one of the columns approached the Winter Palace, shots suddenly rang out. The units stationed at the Winter Palace fired three volleys at the procession participants (in the Alexander Garden, at the Palace Bridge and at the General Staff building). The cavalry and mounted gendarmes chopped down the workers with swords and finished off the wounded.
According to official figures, 96 people were killed and 330 wounded, according to unofficial data - more than a thousand killed and two thousand wounded.
According to journalists from St. Petersburg newspapers, the number of killed and wounded was about 4.9 thousand people.
The murdered police secretly buried at night at the Preobrazhensky, Mitrofanevsky, Uspensky and Smolensky cemeteries.
The Bolsheviks of Vasilyevsky Island distributed a leaflet in which they called on the workers to seize weapons and start an armed struggle against the autocracy. The workers seized weapons stores and warehouses, disarmed the police. The first barricades were erected on Vasilyevsky Island.
In 1905-1907, events took place in Russia, which were later called the first Russian revolution. The beginning of these events is considered to be January 1905, when the workers of one of the St. Petersburg factories entered the political struggle.
Back in 1904, a young priest of the St. Petersburg transit prison, Georgy Gapon, with the assistance of the police and city authorities, created in the city a working organization "Assembly of Russian Factory Workers of St. Petersburg." In the first months, the workers simply arranged general evenings, often with tea, dancing, and opened a mutual benefit fund. By the end of 1904, about 9 thousand people were already members of the "Assembly". In December 1904, one of the masters of the Putilov factory fired four workers who were members of the organization. The "assembly" immediately came out in support of the comrades, sent a delegation to the director of the plant, and, despite his attempts to smooth over the conflict, the workers decided to stop work in protest. On January 2, 1905, the huge Putilov factory stopped. The strikers put forward already increased demands: to establish an 8-hour working day, to increase salaries. Other metropolitan factories gradually joined the strike, and a few days later 150,000 workers were on strike in St. Petersburg.
G. Gapon spoke at meetings, calling for a peaceful procession to the tsar, who alone could stand up for the workers. He even helped prepare an appeal to Nicholas II, in which there were such lines: “We have become impoverished, we are oppressed, .. people do not recognize us, they treat us like slaves ... No more strength, Sovereign ... That terrible moment has come for us, when death is better than the continuation of unbearable torments. Look without anger ... at our requests, they are directed not to evil, but to good, both for us and for You, Sovereign!" The appeal listed the requests of the workers, for the first time it included demands for political freedoms, the organization of the Constituent Assembly - it was practically a revolutionary program. On January 9, a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace was scheduled. Gapon assured that the tsar should go out to the workers and accept an appeal from them.
On January 9, about 140,000 workers took to the streets of St. Petersburg. The columns headed by G. Gapon went to the Winter Palace. The workers came with their families, children, festively dressed, they carried portraits of the king, icons, crosses, sang prayers. Throughout the city, the procession met armed soldiers, but no one wanted to believe that they could shoot. Nicholas II was in Tsarskoye Selo that day, but the workers believed that he would come to listen to their requests. When one of the columns approached the Winter Palace, shots suddenly rang out. The first dead and wounded fell.
The people who held the icons and portraits of the tsar firmly believed that the soldiers would not dare to shoot at them, but a new volley struck, and those who carried these relics began to fall to the ground. The crowd mixed up, people rushed to run, there were screams, crying, new shots. G. Gapon himself was shocked no less than the workers.
January 9 was called "Bloody Sunday". On the streets of the capital that day, from 130 to 200 workers died, the number of wounded reached 800 people. The police ordered not to give the corpses of the dead to their relatives, they were buried secretly at night.
The events of "Bloody Sunday" shocked the whole of Russia. The portraits of the king, previously revered, were torn and trampled. Shocked by the execution of the workers, G. Gapon exclaimed: "There is no more God, no more tsar!" In his new address to the people, he wrote: “Brothers, comrades-workers! Innocent blood has still been shed ... The bullets of the tsar’s soldiers ... shot through the tsar’s portrait and killed our faith in the tsar. So let’s take revenge, brothers, on the tsar cursed by the people ... to all the robbers of the unfortunate Russian land. Death to them all!"
Maxim Gorky, shocked no less than others by what had happened, later wrote an essay on January 9, in which he spoke about the events of that terrible day: they walked, clearly seeing the goal of the path before them, a fabulous image majestically stood in front of them ... Two volleys, blood, corpses, groans and - everyone stood before the gray emptiness, powerless, with torn hearts.
The tragic events of January 9 in St. Petersburg became the day of the beginning of the first Russian revolution, which swept all of Russia.
And now let's look at events from the other side ...
"Let's turn to the main witness of that tragedy - the former priest Gapon.
Here is what was written in the Bolshevik Iskra: “Gapon said at a meeting the day before: “If ... they don’t let us through, then we will break through by force. If the troops shoot at us, we will defend ourselves. Part of the troops will go over to our side, and then we will arrange a revolution. We'll set up barricades, we'll smash gun stores, we'll smash the prison, we'll take over the telegraph and telephone. The Socialist-Revolutionaries promised bombs ... and ours will take.
Where is the weapon from? The SRs promised.
Head of the St. Petersburg security department A. V. Gerasimov in his memoirs, referring to Gapon, he wrote that there was allegedly a plan to kill the king: “Suddenly, I asked him if it was true that on January 9 there was a plan to shoot the sovereign when he went out to the people. Gapon replied: “Yes, that’s right. It would be terrible if this plan came to fruition. I learned about it much later. It was not my plan, but Rutenberg’s… The Lord saved him…’”.
The figure of Rutenberg appears. Who is this?
Rutenberg Pinkhas Moiseevich, born in 1878, active participant in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, one of the leaders of the Zionist movement, organizer of the Jewish Legion and the American Jewish Congress. A very interesting figure.
In 1905, he was a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, on the instructions of which Rutenberg took part in the procession of workers and their families to the Winter Palace. Wasn't he, a Socialist-Revolutionary militant, shooting at soldiers and throwing bombs?
Let me remind you: “According to historians, there were those in the crowd who opened fire on the soldiers, provoking them to retaliate” ...
*********************************************************
Priest Georgy Gapon and mayor I. A. Fullon at the opening of the Kolomna department of the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers of St. Petersburg
Participants of Bloody Sunday
January 9, 1905 Cavalrymen at the Pevchesky Bridge delay the movement of the procession to the Winter Palace.
Troops on Palace Square
Cossack patrol on Nevsky Prospekt January 9, 1905
Execution of a workers' procession on January 9, 1905
Graves of the victims of Bloody Sunday 1905
Priest George Gapon, leading the procession, was practically an instigator and provocateur of unsuspecting workers - he inspired them that the petition would certainly be accepted by the tsar, and pushed the masses to the abyss of bloodshed.
People who did not think about the revolution were thrown into the volleys of army units. Having come to their senses, the workers tried to stop the procession, but they got into pincers between the troops, the revolutionaries and the pushing masses of the rear ranks of the marchers who had not yet realized what was happening.
Gapon, who had provoked the masses, went into hiding and then fled abroad. An excited crowd smashed shops, erected barricades, attacked policemen, military officers, officers and people simply passing by in cabs. There were many killed and wounded, the numerical data on this in different sources differ very significantly.
Clashes also took place at the Narva outpost, on the Shlisselburgsky tract, Vasilevsky Island and the Vyborg side. On Vasilyevsky Island, a group of workers led by the Bolshevik L.D. Davydova seized Schaff's weapons workshop, but was expelled from there by the police.
As the immediate consequences of this event, the liberal opposition and revolutionary organizations became more active, and the first Russian revolution began.
On January 22 (9 according to the old style), 1905, the troops and the police broke up a peaceful procession of St. Petersburg workers who were going to the Winter Palace to hand Nicholas II a collective petition about the needs of the workers. In the course of the demonstration, as Maxim Gorky described the events in his famous novel The Life of Klim Samgin, ordinary people also joined the workers. The bullets flew at them too. Many were trampled down by a frightened crowd of demonstrators who rushed to run after the execution began.
Everything that happened in St. Petersburg on January 22 went down in history under the name "Bloody Sunday". In many ways, it was the bloody events of that day off that predetermined the further decline of the Russian Empire.
But like any global event that turned the course of history, "Bloody Sunday" gave rise to a lot of rumors and mysteries, which hardly anyone can unravel after 109 years. What are these riddles - in the selection of "RG".
1. Proletarian solidarity or a cunning conspiracy?
The spark from which the flame flared up was the dismissal of four workers from the Putilov factory in St. Petersburg, famous for the fact that at one time the first cannonball was cast there and the production of railway rails was launched. “When the demand for their return was not satisfied,” writes an eyewitness of what was happening, “the plant immediately became very friendly. they sent a deputation to other factories with a message of their demands and a proposal to join. Thousands and tens of thousands of workers began to join the movement. As a result, 26,000 people were on strike. A meeting of Russian factory workers in St. Petersburg, headed by priest Georgy Gapon, prepared a petition for the needs of the workers and residents of St. Petersburg. The main idea there was the convening of a people's representation on the terms of universal, secret and equal voting. In addition to this, a number of political and economic demands were put forward, such as freedom and inviolability of the person, freedom of speech, press, assembly, freedom of conscience in matters of religion, public education at public expense, equality of all before the law, responsibility of ministers to the people, guarantees legitimacy of government, replacement of indirect taxes with direct progressive income tax, introduction of an 8-hour working day, amnesty for political prisoners, separation of church and state The petition ended with a direct appeal to the king. Moreover, this idea belonged to Gapon himself and was expressed by him long before the January events. Menshevik A. A. Sukhov recalled that back in the spring of 1904, Gapon, in a conversation with workers, developed his idea: “The officials interfere with the people, but the people will come to an agreement with the tsar.
However, there is no smoke without fire. Therefore, subsequently, both the monarchist-minded parties and movements, and the Russian emigration, assessed the Sunday procession as nothing more than a carefully prepared conspiracy, one of the developers of which was Leon Trotsky, and whose main goal was to kill the tsar. The workers were simply set up, as they say. And Gapon was chosen as the leader of the uprising only because he was popular among the workers of St. Petersburg. Peaceful manifestations were not planned. According to the plan of the engineer and active revolutionary Peter Rutenberg, clashes and a general uprising were to take place, the weapons for which were already available. And it was delivered from abroad, in particular, Japan. Ideally, the king should have gone out to the people. And the conspirators planned to kill the king. But was it really so? Or was it still ordinary proletarian solidarity? The workers were simply very annoyed by the fact that they were forced to work seven days a week, paid little and irregularly, and, in addition, they were fired. And then it went and went.
2. A provocateur or an agent of the tsarist secret police?
Around George Gapon, a half-educated priest (at one time he abandoned the Poltava Theological Seminary), there were always many legends. How could this young man, although, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, possessed a bright appearance and outstanding oratorical qualities, become the leader of the workers?
In the notes of the prosecutor of the St. Petersburg Court of Justice to the Minister of Justice dated January 4-9, 1905, there is such a note: “The named priest has acquired extraordinary importance in the eyes of the people. Most consider him a prophet who came from God to protect the working people. To this, legends about him are added invulnerability, elusiveness, etc. Women speak of him with tears in their eyes. Relying on the religiosity of the vast majority of workers, Gapon carried away the entire mass of factory workers and artisans, so that at present about 200,000 people are participating in the movement. Using precisely this side of the moral forces of a Russian commoner, Gapon, in the words of one person, "slapped" the revolutionaries, who lost all significance in these unrest, issuing only 3 proclamations in an insignificant number. By order of Father Gapon, the workers drive the agitators away from themselves and destroy the leaflets, blindly follow her spiritual father. With this way of thinking of the crowd, she undoubtedly firmly and convincedly believes in the rightness of his desire to submit a petition to the king and have an answer from him, believing that if students are persecuted for their propaganda and demonstrations, then an attack on a crowd going to the king with a cross and a priest will be clear evidence of the impossibility for the subjects of the king to ask him for their needs.
During Soviet times, the historical literature was dominated by the version according to which Gapon was an agent provocateur of the tsarist secret police. “Back in 1904, before the Putilov strike,” the “Short Course of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks” said, “with the help of the provocateur priest Gapon, the police created their own organization among the workers - the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers.” This organization had its branches in When the strike began, priest Gapon at the meetings of his society proposed a provocative plan: on January 9, let all the workers gather and, in a peaceful procession with banners and royal portraits, go to the Winter Palace and submit a petition (request) to the tsar about their needs. they say, he will go out to the people, listen and satisfy their demands. Gapon undertook to help the tsarist secret police: to cause the execution of workers and drown the labor movement in blood.
Although for some reason Lenin's statements were completely forgotten in the "Short Course". A few days after January 9 (22), V. I. Lenin wrote in the article "Revolutionary Days": "Letters from Gapon, written by him after the massacre on January 9, that "we have no tsar", calling him to fight for freedom etc. - all these are facts that speak in favor of his honesty and sincerity, because such powerful agitation for the continuation of the uprising could no longer be included in the tasks of a provocateur. Further, Lenin wrote that the question of Gapon's sincerity "could be decided only by unfolding historical events, only by facts, facts and facts. And the facts decided this question in favor of Gapon." After the arrival of Gapon abroad, when he set about preparing an armed uprising, the revolutionaries openly recognized him as their colleague. However, after the return of Gapon to Russia after the Manifesto of October 17, the old enmity flared up with renewed vigor.
Another common myth about Gapon was that he was a paid agent of the tsarist secret police. The studies of modern historians do not confirm this version, since it has no documentary basis. So, according to the research of the historian-archivist S. I. Potolov, Gapon cannot be considered an agent of the tsarist secret police, since he was never listed in the lists and file cabinets of agents of the security department. In addition, until 1905, Gapon legally could not be an agent of the security department, since the law strictly prohibited the recruitment of representatives of the clergy as agents. Gapon cannot be considered an agent of the Okhrana for factual reasons, since he has never been engaged in intelligence activities. Gapon is not involved in the extradition of a single person to the police who would be arrested or punished on his tip. There is not a single denunciation written by Gapon. According to the historian I. N. Ksenofontov, all attempts by Soviet ideologists to portray Gapon as a police agent were based on the juggling of facts.
Although Gapon, of course, cooperated with the Police Department and even received large sums of money from him. But this cooperation was not of the nature of undercover activity. According to Generals A. I. Spiridovich and A. V. Gerasimov, Gapon was invited to cooperate with the Police Department not as an agent, but as an organizer and agitator. Gapon's task was to fight the influence of revolutionary propagandists and convince the workers of the advantages of peaceful methods of fighting for their interests. In accordance with this attitude, Gapon set up and his students explained to the workers the advantages of legal methods of struggle. The police department, considering this activity useful for the state, supported Gapon and from time to time supplied him with sums of money. Gapon himself, as the head of the "Assembly", went to officials from the Police Department and made reports to them on the state of the labor issue in St. Petersburg. Gapon did not hide his relationship with the Police Department and the receipt of money from him from his workers. Living abroad, in his autobiography, Gapon described the history of his relationship with the Police Department, in which he explained the fact of receiving money from the police.
Did he know what he was leading the workers on January 9 (22)? Here is what Gapon himself wrote: "January 9 is a fatal misunderstanding. In this, in any case, it is not society that is to blame with me at the head ... I really went to the king with naive faith for the truth, and the phrase:" at the cost of our own lives, we guarantee the inviolability of the individual sovereign" was not an empty phrase. But if for me and for my faithful comrades the person of the sovereign was and is sacred, then the good of the Russian people is dearest to us. at the head, under the bullets and bayonets of the soldiers, in order to testify with their blood to the truth - namely, the urgency of the renewal of Russia on the basis of truth. (G. A. Gapon. Letter to the Minister of Internal Affairs ").
3. Who killed Gapon?
In March 1906, Georgy Gapon left St. Petersburg on the Finnish Railway and did not return. According to the workers, he went to a business meeting with a representative of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. When leaving, Gapon did not take any things or weapons with him, and promised to return by evening. The workers were worried that something bad had happened to him. But no one did much research.
It was only in mid-April that reports appeared in the newspapers that Gapon had been killed by Peter Rutenberg, a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. It was reported that Gapon was strangled with a rope and his corpse was hanging on one of the empty dachas near St. Petersburg. The messages have been confirmed. On April 30, at the dacha of Zverzhinskaya in Ozerki, the body of a murdered man was found, who by all signs resembled Gapon. The workers of the Gapon organizations confirmed that the murdered man was Georgy Gapon. An autopsy showed that death was due to strangulation. According to preliminary data, Gapon was invited to the dacha by a person well known to him, was attacked and strangled with a rope and hung on a hook driven into the wall. At least 3-4 people were involved in the murder. The person who rented the dacha was identified by a janitor from a photograph. It turned out to be engineer Peter Rutenberg.
Rutenberg himself did not admit to the allegations and subsequently claimed that Gapon was killed by the workers. According to a certain "hunter for provocateurs" Burtsev, Gapon was strangled with his own hand by a certain Derental, a professional killer from the entourage of the terrorist B. Savinkov.
4. How many victims were there?
The "Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks" contained the following data: more than 1,000 killed and more than 2,000 wounded. at the same time, in his article "Revolutionary Days" in the newspaper "Vperyod" Lenin wrote: the figure cannot be complete, because even during the day (not to mention the night) it would be impossible to count all the dead and wounded in all the skirmishes.
In comparison with him, the writer V. D. Bonch-Bruevich tried to somehow substantiate such figures (in his article of 1929). He proceeded from the fact that 12 companies of different regiments fired 32 volleys, a total of 2861 shots. Having allowed 16 misfires per volley per company, for 110 shots, Bonch-Bruevich threw off 15 percent, that is, 430 shots, attributed the same amount to misses, received 2000 hits in the remainder and came to the conclusion that at least 4 thousand people suffered. His methodology was thoroughly criticized by the historian S. N. Semanov in his book Bloody Sunday. For example, Bonch-Bruyevich considered a volley of two companies of grenadiers at the Sampsonievsky bridge (220 shots), while in fact no shots were fired at this place. Not 100 soldiers fired at the Alexander Garden, as Bonch-Bruevich believed, but 68. In addition, the even distribution of hits is completely incorrect - one bullet per person (many received several wounds, which was registered by hospital doctors); and part of the soldiers deliberately fired upwards. Semanov was in solidarity with the Bolshevik V.I. Nevsky (who considered the most plausible total figure of 800-1000 people), without specifying how many were killed and how many wounded, although Nevsky gave such a division in his 1922 article: "Figures of five or more thousand, which were called in the early days are clearly incorrect. One can approximately determine the number of wounded from 450 to 800 and killed from 150 to 200. "
According to the same Semanov, the government first reported that only 76 people were killed and 223 were wounded, then they made an amendment that 130 were killed and 229 were wounded. To this it must be added that a leaflet issued by the RSDLP immediately after the events of January 9 stated that "at least 150 people were killed, but many hundreds were wounded."
According to the modern publicist O. A. Platonov, on January 9, there were 96 killed (including a police officer) and up to 333 wounded, of which 34 more people died by the old style by January 27 (including one assistant bailiff). Thus, in total, 130 people were killed and died of wounds and about 300 were injured.
5. Come out the king to the balcony ...
"A hard day! Serious unrest occurred in St. Petersburg due to the desire of the workers to reach the Winter Palace. The troops were supposed to shoot in different parts of the city, there were many killed and wounded. Lord, how painful and hard!" Nicholas II wrote after the events in St. Petersburg .
Baron Wrangel’s comment is noteworthy: “One thing seems certain to me: if the Sovereign came out onto the balcony, if he listened to the people one way or another, nothing would happen, except that the tsar would become more popular than he was ... How the prestige of his great-grandfather, Nicholas I, was strengthened, after his appearance during the cholera riot on Sennaya Square! But the Tsar was only Nicholas II, and not the Second Nicholas ... "The Tsar did not go anywhere. And what happened happened.
6. A sign from above?
According to eyewitnesses, during the dispersal of the procession on January 9, a rare natural phenomenon was observed in the sky of St. Petersburg - a halo. According to the memoirs of the writer L. Ya. Gurevich, “in the cloudy, hazy sky, the cloudy-red sun gave two reflections around itself in the fog, and it seemed to the eyes that there were three suns in the sky. Then, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, an unusual bright rainbow in winter lit up in the sky, and when it dimmed and disappeared, a snow storm arose.
Other witnesses saw a similar picture. According to scientists, a similar natural phenomenon is observed in frosty weather and is caused by the refraction of sunlight in ice crystals floating in the atmosphere. Visually, it manifests itself in the form of false suns (parhelia), circles, rainbows or solar pillars. In the old days, such phenomena were considered as heavenly signs, foreshadowing trouble.
"Bloody Sunday" - the beginning of the First Russian Revolution
At the beginning of XX v. in the Russian Empire, the symptoms of the maturing of a revolutionary crisis were clearly identified. Dissatisfaction with the existing order every year covered more and more broad sections of the population. The situation was aggravated by the economic crisis, which led to the massive closure of enterprises and the dismissal of workers who joined the ranks of the strikers. In Petrograd at the beginning of January 1905, the strike involved about 150thousand people, becoming, in fact, universal. Under these conditions, any wrong action on the part of the authorities could lead to an explosion.
And 9 (22) January 1905 the explosion happened. On this day, the troops and police of the capital used weapons to disperse the peaceful procession of workers heading with a petition to the tsar.
The initiator of the demonstration was an officially authorized organization - "Assembly of Russian factory workers of the city of St. Petersburg", which has been operating since the beginning of 1904g. under the leadership of priest George Gapon. In connection with the shutdown of the Putilov plant, the Assembly decided to turn to the tsar with a petition that said: “Sir! We have come to you to seek truth and protection... No more strength, sir. The limit of patience has come ... ". Under the influence of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Social Democrats, requests were included in the text of the appeal, the satisfaction of which was obviously impossible to count on: the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the abolition of indirect taxes, the proclamation of political freedoms, the separation of church and state, and others.
Early Sunday morning 9(22) January 1905 from all districts of St. Petersburg, tens of thousands of people, among whom were the elderly, women and children, with icons and royal portraits in their hands, moved to the Winter Palace. Despite the information available about the peaceful nature of the procession, the government did not consider it possible to allow the demonstrators to approach the royal residence and declared the city under martial law, putting armed police and regular army units in the way of the workers. The groups of demonstrators were too numerous and, having come across the barrier cordons, they could not immediately interrupt the movement. Fire was opened on the advancing demonstrators, and panic began. As a result, according to various sources, on this Sunday, popularly called "bloody", about 4.6 thousand people.
One of the senior commanders of the military units of the Guards commented on the current situation: “... Palace Square is the tactical key to St. Petersburg. If the crowd took possession of it and turned out to be armed, then it is not known how it would have ended. Therefore, at the meeting 8(21) January under the chairmanship of His Imperial Highness [St.(22) January in Petersburg. Of course, if we could be sure that the people would go to the square unarmed, then our decision would be different ... but what has been done cannot be changed.”
Tragic events 9(22) January 1905 in St. Petersburg shook the faith of the people in the tsar and became the beginning of the First Russian Revolution, which engulfed in 1905-1907. all of Russia.
Lit.: Report of the Director of the Police Department Lopukhin to the Minister of Internal Affairs on the events of January 9 // Krasnaya letopis. 1922. No. 1; Karelin A. E. The ninth of January and Gapon // Red Chronicle. 1922. No. 1; Leaflet about the revolutionary days in St. Petersburg 9 January 1905 St. Petersburg, 1905; Nikolsky E. A. January 9, 1905 year // Nikolsky E. A. Notes about the past. M., 2007;Petition of workers and residents of St. Petersburg to submit to Nikolai II January 9, 1905 / / The Russian state: power and society. M., 1996; The same [Electronic resource]. URL :
