BLOODY SUNDAY
January 9th, 1905 went down in the history of Russia as Bloody Sunday,
an incident that occurred in St.Petersburg and came to be viewed as a rehearsal
of the 1917 upheaval in which the monarchy was crushed.
 The first signs of
the forthcoming social tumult became visible in 1904, when the public discontent
of the policies of Czar Nicholas II heated up by revolutionary and liberally
minded intellectuals kept building up spilling into open criticism in the
press, disturbances at universities and a wave of strikes that rolled through
the country. Adding to the already explosive situation was the war, which
Russia was waging with Japan. Czar Nicholas II was ready for a discussion
and reforms but on condition the political system stayed intact.
The events of January 9th, 1905, instigated by revolutionaries, which had
links to anti-Russian forces in the West, came as a test for strength for
the authorities.
In late December 1904 the dismissal of four workers at the Putilov Metal
Works grew into a thousands-strong strike that ran on to other enterprises.
In no time at all there sprang up a strike committee and a fund to support
the strikers. The organizing committee, headed by a priest, Father Georgy
Gapon, drew up a petition to the Tsar outlining the workers’ demands, which
asked for an increase in wages, a reduction in the working day to 8 hours,
abolition of extra hours and a say in dismissal-related matters. The very
last of the demands included political freedoms and a Constituent Assembly.
The workers supported the economic demands. At the very last moment, however,
there arrived a petition allegedly made on behalf of workers but containing
the demand for government reforms and a reform in the political system.
That was an undisguised political provocation on the part of revolutionaries,
for they spoke out as if representing the will of people and attempted
to lay claims on the unwanted government in the severe conditions of the
war with Japan.
Father Gapon suggested that the workers present their petition to the Tsar
and the procession was set for Sunday, January 9th. Thousands of people
launched preparations for the day. Well until January 8th the St.Petersburg
authorities knew nothing of the other petition, drawn up behind the workers’
backs. The discovery of that sent them into horror. Immediately they issued
a warrant on the arrest of Gapon but he had taken good care to disappear
by then. The procession in which thousands of people were expected to take
part was impossible to call off. So the authorities decide to thwart the
workers from getting to the city center. The Tsar was at his Tsarskoye
Selo residence at the moment and was thus in complete safety. The authorities’
only concern was to avoid casualties that are imminent with masses of people
packed into one narrow space. Hence the order to the troops to contain
crowds from reaching the center and use weapons only in case of emergency.
On January 8th Gapon sends a letter to the Interior Minister with an ultimatum
demanding that the Tsar meet with the people. On the morning of January
9th the workers served a prayer for Tsar Nicholas II. Wearing their best
and carrying icons, portraits of the Tsar and gonfalons, the 300-thousand
strong procession headed for the Winter Palace. The revolutionaries, meanwhile,
were campaigning in the very midst of the masses spreading rumors of mass
killings of people. The head of the police department Lopukhin wrote that
electrified by the agitation the workers took no notice of the police and
mounted troops and persistently forced their way to the Winter Palace,
annoyed at the resistance they encountered and even attacking army units
as they went. This forced the soldiers into resorting to firearms as an
emergency measure to restore order.
At the head of the procession stood Gapon, who cried out repeatedly that
if the authorities say “no”, they don’t have a Tsar any longer. The officers
were pleading with the onrushing crowd to stop but the people remained
deaf to the appeals. The first shots came, blank, though. The people were
about to turn back but Gapon and his associates were marching forward motioning
the rest to follow. Then came the real gunshots…
The incident left 96 people killed and up to 333 wounded. Several days
after, as he addressed the workers, the Tsar spoke of it as a sad occasion
with equally sad but inevitable consequences proceeding from the workers’
letting themselves being misled and cheated by traitors and enemies. By
inviting you to go and tell me of the needs of yours, the Nicholas II said,
they induced you into rebelling against me and my government and got you
forcibly distracted from your honest work at a time when all Russian people
must join efforts and work day and night to defeat the enemy from the outside.
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