Bloody Sunday

The terrible Bloody Sunday of 1905 did not happen all of a sudden. He was preceded by the movement of peasants and workers in many regions of the country during the whole of 1904. In December, the strike in Baku led to the conclusion of an agreement with the owners of the plant. It discussed the increase of wages, reduction of the working day, annual leave and other issues. At the Putilov factory, the strike began on January 3, and on January 8 it acquired the general scale.

And the events that occurred on the next day, January 9, and survived in the history under the title "Bloody Sunday", served as the beginning of the revolution, which lasted another two and a half years. Its development included several stages.

So, the prologue to the revolution was Bloody Sunday and a general strike in Petersburg. Under the leadership of Gapon, trying at least somehow to extinguish the uprising, the workers of the factories in St. Petersburg drafted a petition that included a request to improve their financial situation (to make the working day shorter, to grant annual leave and other benefits). There were also demands of a political nature: to introduce democratic freedoms (conscience, words, immunities), the Constituent Assembly to be convened by secret and equal voting.

With this petition the workers went to the king, confident of his mercy and justice. The Social Democrats could not dissuade Gapon from the intention, nor the soldiers to shoot at the workers. The authorities knew about the preparation of the procession, about the content of the petition, but did not obstruct all this openly. However, on January 7 and 8 at a meeting at the head of the city, they discussed in detail the location of the tsarist troops. Svyatopolk-Mirsky reported to Nicholas II about the measures to be taken, after which he went to Tsarskoe Selo.

The columns, headed by Gapon, numbered 140,000 workers. They held icons, a portrait of the king, sang prayers and advanced to the center of St. Petersburg. The chain of soldiers met the demonstrators in front of the Winter Palace first with idle salvos, and then with the shooting of people "armed" only with icons and banners.

In the rest of the city the workers were not spared either. As a result, more than a thousand people were killed on Bloody Sunday, and five thousand wounded. Such a cruel and senseless reprisal with people who went to the king with confidence and peaceful intentions (including women, old people and children), aroused indignation of Russians living abroad. Statements that the tsar was not in the capital and ordered not to shoot, did not help. And on the evening of January 9, Bloody Sunday had a continuation: workers had already started building barricades in the daytime, the first were built on the Vasilievsky Island. The demonstrators, who were completely peaceful in the morning, were already aggressively attacking arms stores, police stations, and policemen in the evening. The process developed very rapidly. It was clear that the Bloody Sunday of 1905 was only the beginning of a great revolution.

The response to the crime of the authorities was protests involving 440,000 demonstrators. Their main slogan was the call "Down with the autocracy!". Strikes took place in all the largest cities. In Ivanovo-Voznesensk, a Council of authorized deputies was established. Further mass uprisings from cities spread to the villages. The Peasant Union was created, which put forward its demands.

The government, under the onslaught of the growing revolutionary movement, had to make a concession. It, as promised, convened the Bulygin Duma, which received the name after the Minister of Internal Affairs, who was at that time in power. However, the attempt failed right away, as the law-making body it wanted to establish too restricted the electoral rights and opportunities of the common people. Thus ended the first stage of the revolution.