January 22, 1905: Bloody Sunday In St. Petersburg

January 22, 1905: Unarmed demonstrators, led by Father Georgy Gapon, are fired upon by soldiers of the Imperial Guard, as they march toward the Winter Palace to present a petition to Czar Nicholas II of Russia. It becomes one of many such instances in human history known as "Bloody Sunday."

The crowd kept their ideals of faith in the monarchy and in the Russian Orthodox Church, a branch of Catholicism. But they were poor, and oppressed, and needed reform. Their petition was written in subservient terms and ended with a reminder to the tsar of his obligation to the people of Russia and their resolve to do what it took to ensure their pleas were met. It concluded: "And if Thou dost not so order and dost not respond to our pleas we will die here in this square before Thy palace." 

The Czar wasn't even there: He had left the night before, for a country residence, the Catherine Palace, in Tsarskoye Selo, now named Pushkin for the great 19th Century Russian poet.

Estimates of the dead range from 96 to over 4,000, despite the most common estimate of total demonstrators being about 3,000.

The immediate consequence of Bloody Sunday was a strike movement that spread throughout the country. Strikes began to erupt outside of St. Petersburg in places such as Moscow; Warsaw, Poland; Riga, Latvia; Vilna and Kanuas, Lithuania; Tallinn, Estonia; Tblisi, Georgia; and Baku, Azerbaijan. The Revolution of 1905 was on.

The Czar attempted to appease the people with the creation of parliament, the Duma. But their passage of reform was as glacial as the frozen wastes of Siberia, and the strike movement spread. So, as "Czar and Autocrat of all the Russias," Nicholas II did was autocrats tend to do: He overreacted. He set the Army loose on the demonstrators. Over the next year, over 15,000 people were executed, and 45,000 were sent into exile.

The most significant long-term effect of Bloody Sunday was the drastic change in the attitude of the Russian peasants and workers. Previously, the Czar had been seen as the champion of the people: In dire situations, the masses would appeal to him, traditionally through a petition, and the Czar would respond to his people promising to set things right. The lower classes placed their faith in the Czar: Any problems that the lower classes faced were associated with the noblemen, known as Boyars in Russia. 

After Bloody Sunday, the Czar was no longer distinguished from the bureaucrats, and was held personally responsible for the deaths that occurred. The social contract between the Czar and the people was broken, which delegitimized the position of the Czar and his alleged divine right to rule.

On April 10, 1906, Father Gapon was hanged by the government. He was 36 years old.

The Revolution of 1905 inspired the later Russian Revolutions of 1917, the 1st of which deposed the Czar, the 2nd of which imposed Communist rule and led to the execution of the Czar and his family.

It also inspired some major works of art, including Maxim Gorky's 1908 novel The Life of a Useless Man; Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent film classic Battleship Potemkin, with its "Odessa Steps" sequence copied by many other films; and Dmitri Shostakovich's 11th Symphony, premiering in 1957 and subtitled The Year 1905.

*

January 22, 1905 was a Sunday. Baseball and football were out of season. Hockey was still all-amateur, and basketball had barely been invented. So there were no scores on this historic day.