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By Lyubov Tsarevskaya
Upon request from our listener from Ireland, Jonathan Murphy, we’ll tell you of Father Grigory Gapon, who headed a demonstration of workers in St.Petersburg on January 9th, 1905, which went down in the Russian history as the Bloody Sunday.
In the early 20th century revolutionary movement in Russia was on the rise and taking part in it were people who played a double game of sorts collaborating with the police and at the same time using this collaboration to realize their anti-government plans. One of the most widely known turncoats was Father Grigory Gapon.
Grigory Gapon was born in Ukraine. While at school he attracted the attention of the Bible teacher. The teacher characterized him as a skinny boy with narrow menacing eyes, who exercised a diabolic power over people. He wrote he was fearful every time he faced the class. The moment he came in the little devil held him in his piercing gaze right away and would never let go until the bell rang the end of the class. In Christ’s teachings the boy’s knowledge was good but one-sided. He could name in the order of hierarchy all church titles up to the patriarch, as if he were going to follow the path. The boy once said that the time would come when his name would be pronounced in all churches across Russia. And he added that he would be either a saint or a convict. Due to his skills in making the right contacts with the right people Gapon managed to get himself ordained to priesthood. That was when he first knew the true taste of public admiration and chose to devote his life to saying sermons, which produced a strong impression on the parishioners.
But this was not where Gapon’s ambition exhausted itself. He next went to Petersburg, where his unbelievable resoluteness bordering on flippancy earned him a seat in a seminary. He never graduated from the seminary though, failing to pass the third-year exams. Politics appealed to him more now. An energetic and ambitious individual that he was, Gapon immediately caught the police eye. He began to collaborate with the police and was soon planted in the workers’ midst, where revolutionary ideas spread fast. In 1904 Gapon enjoyed tremendous influence among workers of Petersburg. But as revolutionary movement gained strength, he knew he had to change course in the direction of closer ties with revolutionaries, since events of historical importance were just around the corner and he had to be on their crest.
On January 9th, 1905 with the help of revolutionaries Gapon organized a workers march to the imperial palace with a petition. He in fact instigated the workers’ clash with the police, who had been taking measures to maintain law and order. As a result, 130 people died in the clash. After January 9th Gapon fled abroad but returned to Russia on amnesty. The revolutionaries, fully aware of his activities as a turncoat, decided to remove him as a dangerous witness and after luring him into a country house they hanged him. And that was how the life of one of the most notorious turncoats of the 20th century came to an end.
02/20/2004 |