George Gapon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Georgi Apollonovich Gapon (Russian: Георгий Аполлонович Гапон; 17 February 1870 [O.S. 5 February] — 10 April 1906 [O.S. 28 March]) was a Russian Orthodox priest and a popular working class leader before the Russian Revolution of 1905.
Gapon was the son of a wealthy farmer from Poltava region, educated in a theological seminary. After his wife's death, he moved to Saint Petersburg and graduated there from the theological academy in 1903. He believed there was some kind of mystical union tying the Tsar and his people together, and preached this is the workers districts of the capital.
Father Gapon organized the Assembly of Russian Factory and Plant Workers of St. Petersburg, which was patronized by the Department of the Police and the St. Petersburg secret police, Okhranka. The Assembly's objectives were to defend workers' rights and to elevate their moral and religious status. Only persons of Russian Orthodox denomination were eligible to join its ranks. Soon the organization had 12 branches and 8,000 members, and Gapon tried to expand activities to Kiev and Moscow. Gapon was not simply an obedient instrument of the police; cooperating with them, he tried to realize his own plans.
From the end of 1904, Gapon started to cooperate with radicals, who had championed the abolition of the Tsar's autocracy.
On January 22, 1905 [O.S. January 9], the day after the general strike burst out in St. Petersburg, Gapon organized a workers' procession to present a petition to the Tsar, which ended tragically (Bloody Sunday 1905). He was saved by his followers that day. Following the Bloody Sunday, he anathematized the Emperor and called upon the workers to take action against the regime, but soon after escaped abroad, where he had close ties with the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. After the October Manifesto he returned to Russia and resumed contact with the Okhranka. Suspected as an agent provocateur, Gapon was hanged in a Finnish cottage by Pinhas Rutenberg in accordance with a sentence passed on him by the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.
