Georgy Gapon - priest, politician, organizer of the procession, which ended with the mass executions of workers, which went down in history under the name "Bloody Sunday". It is impossible to say unequivocally who this person really was - a provocateur, a double agent or a sincere revolutionary. There are many contradictory facts in the biography of the priest Gapon.
Peasant's son
He came from a we althy peasant family. Georgy Gapon was born in 1870 in the Poltava province. Perhaps his ancestors were Zaporozhye Cossacks. At least that's the Gapon family tradition. The surname itself comes from the name Agathon.
In the early years, the future priest helped his parents: tending calves, sheep, pigs. From childhood he was very religious, he liked to listen to stories about saints who could work miracles. After graduating from a village school, George, on the advice of a local priest, entered a religious school. Here he became one of the best students. However, the disciplines included in the program were clearly not enough for him.
Tolstoyan
At the school, the future priest Gapon met the anti-militarist Ivan Tregubov, who infected him with a love for forbidden literature, namely the books of Leo Tolstoy.
After graduating from college, George entered the seminary. Now he openly expressed Tolstoy's ideas, which led to a conflict with teachers. Was expelled shortly before graduation. After graduating from the seminary, he moonlighted as private tutors.
Priest
Gapon in 1894 married the daughter of a we althy merchant. Soon after his marriage, he decided to take holy orders, and this idea was approved by Bishop Hilarion. In 1894, Gapon became a deacon. In the same year, he received the post of priest of a church in one of the villages of the Poltava province, in which there were very few parishioners. Georgy Gapon's true talent was revealed here.
The priest gave sermons to which many people flocked. He instantly gained popularity not only in his village, but also in neighboring ones. He didn't do idle talk. Priest Gapon coordinated his life with Christian teaching - he helped the poor, performed spiritual duties free of charge.
Popularity among parishioners aroused the envy of priests from neighboring churches. They accused Gapon of kidnapping the flock. He them - in hypocrisy and hypocrisy.
St. Petersburg
In 1898 Gapon's wife died. The priest left the children withrelatives, he himself went to St. Petersburg - to enter the theological academy. And this time Bishop Hilarion helped him. But after studying for two years, Gapon realized that the knowledge he received at the academy did not provide answers to the main questions. Then he already dreamed of serving the people.
Gapon abandoned his studies, went to the Crimea, thought for a long time about whether to become a monk. However, during this period he met the artist and writer Vasily Vereshchagin, who advised him to work for the good of the people and throw off his cassock.
Community activities
Gapon did not throw off his priest's cassock. The clergy did not interfere with social activities, which he began upon his return to St. Petersburg. He began to participate in various charity events and preached a lot. His listeners were workers, whose situation at the beginning of the 20th century remained very difficult. They were representatives of the most vulnerable social stratum: working 11 hours a day, overtime, meager wages, the inability to express their opinion.
Rallies, demonstrations, protests - all this was prohibited by law. And suddenly the priest Gapon appeared, who read simple, understandable sermons that penetrated right into the heart. A lot of people came to listen to him. The number of people in the church at times reached two thousand.
Worker organizations
Priest Gapon was related to Zubatov organizations. What are these associations? At the end of the 19th century, workers' organizations were created in Russia under the control of the police. Thus, the prevention of revolutionarysentiments.
Sergey Zubatov was a police department official. While he controlled the labor movement, Gapon was limited in his actions, he could not freely express his ideas. But after Zubatov was removed from his post, the priest began a double game. From now on, no one controlled him.
To the police, he provided information, according to which, among the workers there is not even a hint of revolutionary sentiment. He himself read sermons in which notes of protest against officials and manufacturers were heard louder and louder. This went on for several years. Until 1905.
Georgy Gapon had a rare talent as an orator. The workers not only believed him, they saw in him almost a messiah who could make them happy. He helped the needy with money that he could not get from officials and manufacturers. Gapon was able to inspire confidence in any person - a worker, a policeman, and a plant owner.
With representatives of the proletariat, the priest spoke their language. Sometimes his speeches, as contemporaries claimed, caused the workers to experience a state of almost mystical ecstasy. Even in a brief biography of the priest Gapon, the events that occurred on January 9, 1905 are mentioned. What preceded the peaceful rally that ended in bloodshed?
Petition
January 6 Georgy Gapon gave a fiery speech to the workers. He talked about the fact that between the worker and the tsar there are officials, factory owners and other bloodsuckers. He called for directto the ruler.
Priest Gapon wrote a petition in an eloquent ecclesiastical style. On behalf of the people, he turned to the king with a request to help, namely, to approve the so-called program of five. He called to bring the people out of poverty, ignorance, oppression of officials. The petition ended with the words "let our life become a sacrifice for Russia." This phrase suggests that Gapon understood how the procession to the royal palace could end. In addition, if in the speech that the priest read on January 6, there was a hope that the ruler would hear the pleas of the workers, then two days later, both he and his entourage had little faith in this. Increasingly, he began to utter the phrase: "If he does not sign the petition, then we no longer have a king."
Priest Gapon and Bloody Sunday
On the eve of the procession, the king received a letter from the organizer of the upcoming procession. He responded to this message with an order to arrest Gapon, which was not so easy to do. The priest was almost around the clock surrounded by fanatically devoted workers. In order to detain him, it was necessary to sacrifice at least ten policemen.
Of course, Gapon was not the only organizer of this event. Historians believe that this was a carefully planned action. But it was Gapon who drew up the petition. It was he who led several hundred workers on January 9 to Palace Square, realizing that the procession would end in bloodshed. At the same time, he called for taking wives and children with them.
About 140,000 people took part in this peaceful rally. The workers were unarmed, but an army was waiting for them at the Palace Square, which opened fire. Nicholas II did not even think of considering the petition. Moreover, that day he was in Tsarskoye Selo.
On January 9, several hundred thousand people died. The authority of the king was finally undermined. The people could forgive him a lot, but not the massacre of the unarmed. In addition, women and children were among those killed on Bloody Sunday.
Gapon was wounded. After dispersing the procession, several workers and the Social Revolutionary Rutenberg took him to the apartment of Maxim Gorky.
Life abroad
After the execution of the demonstration, priest Gapon took off his cassock, shaved off his beard and left for Geneva - the then center of Russian revolutionaries. By that time, all of Europe knew about the organizer of the procession to the king. Both the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionaries dreamed of getting into their ranks a man capable of leading the workers' movement. He had no equal in his ability to influence the crowd.
In Switzerland, Georgy Gapon met with revolutionaries, representatives of various parties. But he was in no hurry to become a member of one of the organizations. The leader of the labor movement believed that a revolution should take place in Russia, but only he could become its organizer. According to contemporaries, it was a person with rare pride, energy and self-confidence.
Abroad, Gapon met with Vladimir Lenin. He was a man closely associated with the working masses, and therefore the future leader carefully prepared for a conversation with him. In May 1905, Gapon nevertheless joined the party. Socialist-Revolutionaries. However, he was not introduced to the central committee and was not initiated into conspiratorial affairs. This angered the former priest, and he broke with the Social Revolutionaries.
Murder
At the beginning of 1906, Gapon returned to St. Petersburg. By that time, the events of the First Russian Revolution were already in full swing, and he played an important role in this. However, the leader of the revolutionary priest was killed on March 28. Information about his death appeared in the newspapers only in mid-April. His body was found in a country house that belonged to the Socialist-Revolutionary Peter Rutenberg. He was the murderer of the leader of the St. Petersburg workers.
Portrait of Priest Gapon
In the photo above you can see the man who organized the procession of workers on January 9, 1905. Portrait of Gapon, compiled by contemporaries: a handsome man of short stature, similar to a gypsy or a Jew. He had a bright, memorable appearance. But most importantly, the priest Gapon had an extraordinary charm, the ability to enter into the trust of a stranger, to find a common language with everyone.
Rutenberg confessed to killing Gapon. He explained his act by the venality and betrayal of the former priest. However, there is a version that Evno Azef, a police officer and one of the leaders of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, set up the charge of Gapon in a double game. It was this man who was in fact a provocateur and a traitor.
