The Meaning of Bloody Sunday

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The Meaning of Bloody Sunday

Bloody Sunday was an incident of January 22, 1905 where unarmed

demonstrators marched to the Winter Palace present a petition to the

Czar. They were gunned down by Imperial guards in St. Petersburg.

The event was organized by Father Gapon, a paid agent provocateur of

the Okhranka, the Czarist internal secret police.

Father George Gapon founded the Assembly of Russian Factory and Plant

Workers, an authorized and police-sponsored organization designed to

deviate any unrest away from violent revolutionary activities. In

December1904, there was a strike at Putilov plant. By January 8, the

city had no electricity and no newspapers. All public areas were

declared closed. As fears rose at subsequent unrest Father Gapon

organized a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace to deliver a

petition to the Tsar that Sunday. Father Gapon being a provocateur

Troops had already been deployed around the Winter Palace and at other

key points around St. Petersburg. The Tsar had left the city on

January 8 for Tsarskoe Selo, the Tsar's village outside St.

Petersburg.

On Sunday, striking workers and their families gathered at six

different positions around the city; they proceeded towards the Winter

Palace without police interference. The army pickets near the palace

first fired warning shots, and then fired directly into the crowds.

Gapon and his crowd were fired upon near the Narva Gate. Around forty

people surrounding him were killed, but he was uninjured, estimates

still average around 1,000 killed or wounded, both from shots and

trampled during the panic.

Gapon's Assembly was closed down that day, and he ...

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...ical socialists were at least partially satisfied. Only the radical

socialists, radical workers and hungry peasants continued the

revolution.

The revolts of the national minorities were in the borderland areas.

They were too localized in nature. These revolts chiefly aimed at

obtaining local independence and not the overthrow of Tsardom.

The Tsar retained the support of the bureaucracy, the major part of

the army and the nobility. Thus the Tsar was able to suppress the

strikes and the revolts after the division had appeared among the

opposition forces.

In short, the opposition forces, divided, unprepared to seize power,

unable to represent the wishes of the peasants and the workers, failed

to overthrow the decadent and demoralized dynasty which retained the

support of the nobles, the bureaucrats and the army.

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