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Bloody Sunday message. January execution

Bloody Sunday message. January execution

January 9 (according to the new style January 22), 1905 - an important historical event V recent history Russia. On this day, with the tacit consent of Emperor Nicholas II, a 150,000-strong procession of workers was shot in St. Petersburg, who were going to hand over to the tsar a petition signed by tens of thousands of Petersburgers with a request for reforms.

The reason for organizing the procession to the Winter Palace was the dismissal of four workers of the largest Putilov plant in St. Petersburg (now the Kirov plant). On January 3, a strike of 13,000 factory workers began demanding the return of those laid off, the introduction of an 8-hour working day, and the abolition of overtime work.

The strikers created an elective commission from the workers to jointly with the administration analyze the claims of the workers. Demands were developed: to introduce an 8-hour working day, to abolish mandatory overtime work, to establish a minimum wage, not to punish strikers, etc. On January 5, the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic workers from other factories to join it.

The Putilovites were supported by the Obukhovsky, Nevsky shipbuilding, cartridge and other factories, by January 7 the strike became general (according to incomplete official data, over 106 thousand people took part in it).

Nicholas II handed over power in the capital to the military command, which decided to crush the labor movement before it turned into a revolution. The main role in suppressing the riots was assigned to the Guard, it was reinforced by other military units of the Petersburg District. 20 infantry battalions and over 20 cavalry squadrons were concentrated at predetermined points.

On the evening of January 8, a group of writers and scientists, with the participation of Maxim Gorky, turned to the ministers with a demand to prevent the execution of workers, but they did not want to listen to her.

On January 9, a peaceful procession to the Winter Palace was scheduled. The procession was prepared by the legal organization "Assembly of Russian Factory Workers of St. Petersburg" headed by priest Georgy Gapon. Gapon spoke at meetings, calling for a peaceful procession to the tsar, who alone could intercede for the workers. Gapon assured that the tsar should go out to the workers and accept an appeal from them.

On the eve of the procession, the Bolsheviks issued a proclamation "To all St. Petersburg workers", in which they explained the futility and danger of the procession conceived by Gapon.

On January 9, about 150,000 workers took to the streets of St. Petersburg. The columns headed by Gapon headed for the Winter Palace.

The workers came with their families, carried portraits of the tsar, icons, crosses, sang prayers. Throughout the city, the procession met armed soldiers, but no one wanted to believe that they could shoot. Emperor Nicholas II was in Tsarskoye Selo that day. When one of the columns approached the Winter Palace, shots suddenly rang out. The units stationed at the Winter Palace fired three volleys at the procession participants (in the Alexander Garden, at the Palace Bridge and at the General Staff building). The cavalry and mounted gendarmes chopped down the workers with swords and finished off the wounded.

According to official figures, 96 people were killed and 330 wounded, according to unofficial data - more than a thousand killed and two thousand wounded.

According to journalists from St. Petersburg newspapers, the number of killed and wounded was about 4.9 thousand people.

The murdered police secretly buried at night at the Preobrazhensky, Mitrofanevsky, Uspensky and Smolensky cemeteries.

The Bolsheviks of Vasilyevsky Island distributed a leaflet in which they called on the workers to seize weapons and start an armed struggle against the autocracy. The workers seized weapons stores and warehouses, disarmed the police. The first barricades were erected on Vasilyevsky Island.

We know this day as Bloody Sunday. Guards units then opened fire to kill. The goal is civilians, women, children, flags, icons and portraits of the last Russian autocrat.

last hope

For a long time, there was a curious joke among ordinary Russian people: “We are the same gentlemen, only the very underside. The master learns from books, and we learn from bumps, but the master has a whiter ass, that's the whole difference. That's how it was, but only for the time being. By the beginning of the XX century. the joke is no longer true. The workers, who are yesterday's peasants, have completely lost faith in a good gentleman who "will come and judge in justice." But the chief master remained. Tsar. The same one who, during the census of the population of the Russian Empire in 1897, wrote in the column "occupation": "The owner of the Russian land."

The logic of the workers who came out on that fateful day in a peaceful procession is simple. Since you are the owner - put things in order. The elite was guided by the same logic. The main ideologue of the empire Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod Konstantin Pobedonostsev directly said: "The basis of the foundations of our system is the immediate proximity of the tsar and the people under the autocratic system."

Now it has become fashionable to argue that, they say, the workers had no right either to march or to petition the sovereign. This is an outright lie. Petitions to kings were served from time immemorial. And normal sovereigns often gave them a go. Catherine the Great, for example, condemned by a peasant petition. TO Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich the Quietest twice, during the Salt and Copper riots, a crowd of Moscow people tumbled in with collective demands to stop the boyar arbitrariness. In such cases, it was not considered shameful to yield to the people. So why in 1905 So why did the last Russian emperor break with the centuries-old tradition?

Here is a list of not even demands, but the requests of the workers with which they went to the “reliability-sovereign”: “The working day is 8 hours. Work around the clock, in three shifts. The normal wage for a laborer is not less than a ruble ( in a day. — Red.). For a female laborer - not less than 70 kopecks. For their children, arrange a nursery. Overtime work is paid at double the rate. The medical personnel of the factories must be more attentive to the wounded and crippled workers. Is it excessive?

World financial crisis 1900-1906 at it's peak. Prices for coal and oil, which Russia exported even then, fell three times. About a third of the banks collapsed. Unemployment reached 20%. The ruble against the pound sterling collapsed by about half. Shares of the Putilov factory, from which it all began, fell by 71%. They began to tighten the nuts. This is with the "bloody" Stalin they were fired for being late for 20 minutes - under the “good” king, they flew out of work in 5 minutes of delay. Fines for marriage due to bad machines sometimes devoured the entire salary. So it's not about revolutionary propaganda.

Here is another quote from a complaint against the owners of factories who, among other things, carried out a government military order: factories of state-owned and directors of private factories, down to apprentices and lower employees, robs people's money and forces workers to build ships that are clearly unsuitable for long-distance navigation, with lead rivets and putty seams instead of embossing. Summary: “The workers' patience has run out. They clearly see that the government of officials is the enemy of the motherland and the people.”

“Why are we like this?!”

How does the “Master of the Russian Land” react to this? But no way. He knew in advance that the workers were preparing a peaceful demonstration, their requests were known. The king-father chose to leave the city. So to speak, took self-withdrawal. Interior Minister Pyotr Svyatopolk-Mirsky On the eve of fatal events, he wrote down: “There are reasons to think that tomorrow everything will turn out well.”

Neither he nor the mayor had any intelligible plan of action. Yes, they ordered 1,000 leaflets to be printed and distributed warning against unauthorized marches. But no clear orders were given to the troops.

The result is impressive. “People were writhing in convulsions, screaming in pain, bleeding. On the grate, embracing one of the bars, a 12-year-old boy with a crushed skull drooped ... After this wild, wanton murder of many innocent people, the indignation of the crowd reached an extreme level. Questions were heard in the crowd: “For the fact that we came to ask for intercession from the king, they shoot us! Is this possible in a Christian country with Christian rulers? This means that we do not have a king, and that the officials are our enemies, we already knew this before! eyewitnesses wrote.

Ten days later, the tsar received a deputation of 34 workers specially selected by the new Governor-General of St. Petersburg Dmitry Trepov, who immortalized himself with the order: “Do not spare cartridges!” The king shook hands with them and even gave them lunch. And in the end, he... forgave them. The families of 200 killed and about 1,000 wounded were assigned 50,000 rubles by the imperial couple.

The English Westminster Gazette of 27 January 1905 wrote: “Nicholas, nicknamed the new peacemaker as the founder of the Hague Conference on Disarmament, could accept a deputation of peaceful subjects. But for this he did not have the courage, intelligence, or honesty. And if a revolution breaks out in Russia, it means that the tsar and the bureaucracy forcibly pushed the suffering people onto this path.

I agreed with the British Baron Wrangel, which is difficult to suspect of betrayal: “If the Sovereign had come out onto the balcony, if he had listened to the people, nothing would have happened, except that the king would have become more popular ... How did the prestige of his great-grandfather strengthen, Nicholas I, after his appearance during the cholera riot on Sennaya Square! But our Tsar was only Nicholas II, and not the second Nicholas.

On this day, one of the most significant events in Russian history. He weakened, if not completely buried the age-old faith of the people in the monarchy. And this contributed to the fact that after twelve years, tsarist Russia ceased to exist.

Anyone who studied in a Soviet school knows the then interpretation of the events of January 9th. Okhrana agent Georgy Gapon, following the order of his superiors, led the people under the soldiers' bullets. Today, national patriots are putting forward a completely different version: allegedly, the revolutionaries used Gapon in the dark for a grandiose provocation. What actually happened?

Crowds gathered for the sermon

« Provocateur "Georgy Gapon was born on February 5, 1870 in Ukraine, in the family of a priest. After graduating from a rural school, he entered the Kyiv seminary, where he showed himself to be a man of extraordinary abilities. He was appointed to one of the best Kyiv parishes - a church in a rich cemetery. However, the liveliness of character prevented the young priest from joining the orderly ranks of the provincial clergy. He moved to the capital of the empire, where he brilliantly passed the exams in the spiritual academy. Soon he was offered a position as a priest in a charitable organization located on the 22nd line of Vasilyevsky Island - the so-called Blue Cross Mission. It was there that he found his true calling...

The mission was to help working families. Gapon took up this task with enthusiasm. He went to the slums, where the poor and the homeless lived, and preached. His sermons were a resounding success. Thousands of people gathered to listen to the priest. Together with personal charm, this provided Gapon with entry into high society.

True, the mission soon had to be abandoned. Batiushka started an affair with a minor person. But the way up was already paved. The priest meets such a colorful character as gendarmerie colonel Sergei Zubatov.

Police socialism

He was the creator of the theory of police socialism.

He believed that the state should be above class conflicts, act as an arbitrator in labor disputes between workers and entrepreneurs. To this end, he created workers' unions throughout the country, which, with the help of the police, tried to defend the interests of workers.

However, this initiative was truly successful only in the capital, where the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers of St. Petersburg arose. Gapon somewhat modified Zubatov's idea. In the priest's opinion, workers' associations should primarily deal with education, the struggle for people's sobriety, and the like. At the same time, the clergyman organized the matter in such a way that the only link between the police and the Assembly was himself. Although Gapon did not become an agent of the Okhrana.

At first everything went very well. The congregation grew by leaps and bounds. More and more sections were opened in different districts of the capital. The craving for culture and education among skilled workers was quite high. In the Union they taught literacy, history, literature, and even foreign languages. Moreover, lectures were given by the best professors.

But the main role was played by Gapon himself. His speeches were like a prayer. It can be said that he became a working legend: in the city they said that, they say, there was a people's intercessor. In a word, the priest got everything he wanted: on the one hand, an audience of many thousands in love with him, on the other, a police "roof" that provided him with a quiet life.

The attempts of the revolutionaries to use the Assembly for their propaganda were not successful. The agitators were escorted out. Moreover, in 1904, after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, the Union adopted an appeal in which it denounced “revolutionaries and intellectuals who are splitting the nation at a difficult time for the Fatherland.”

Workers increasingly turned to Gapon for help in solving their problems. At first, these were, in modern terms, local labor conflicts. Someone demanded to be expelled from the factory, giving vent to the fists, the master, someone - to reinstate a dismissed comrade at work. Gapon solved these issues at the expense of his authority. He came to the director of the plant and started a small talk, casually mentioning that he had connections in the police and in high society. Well, in the end, he unobtrusively asked to deal with the “simple businessman”. In Russia, it is not customary to refuse such trifles to a person who soars so high.

The situation is heating up...

Gapon's intercession attracted everyone to the Union more people. But the situation in the country was changing, the strike movement was growing rapidly. The mood in the working environment became more and more radical. In order not to lose popularity, the priest had to reach out for them.

And it is not surprising that his speeches became more and more "cool", corresponding to the mood of the masses. And he informed the police: in the Assembly - peace and quiet. They believed him. The gendarmes, having flooded the revolutionary parties with agents, had practically no informants among the workers.

Relations between proletarians and entrepreneurs heated up. On December 3, 1904, one of the workshops of the Putilov factory went on strike. The strikers demanded the reinstatement of six dismissed comrades. The conflict was, in essence, trifling. But the management followed the principle. As always, Gapon intervened. This time they did not listen to him. Business people are already pretty tired of the priest, who constantly sticks his nose into their affairs.

But the workers also went “on principle”. Two days later, all of Putilovsky stood up. The Obukhov plant joined him. Soon almost half of the enterprises of the capital went on strike. And it was no longer just about laid-off workers. There were calls for an eight-hour day, then only found in Australia, and for the introduction of the Constitution.

The meeting was the only legal working organization, it became the center of the strike. Gapon found himself in an extremely unpleasant situation. To support the strikers means to enter into a tough conflict with the authorities, who are very determined. Do not support - instantly and forever lose your "star" status in the proletarian environment.

And then Georgy Apollonovich thought of a saving, as it seemed to him, idea: to organize a peaceful procession to the sovereign. The text of the petition was adopted at a meeting of the Union, which was very stormy. Most likely, Gapon expected that the tsar would come out to the people, promise something, and everything would be settled. The clergyman rushed around the then revolutionary and liberal get-togethers, agreeing that on January 9 there would be no provocations. But in this environment, the police had many informers, and the contacts of the priest with the revolutionaries became known.

…the authorities panicked

On the eve of January 9, 1905 (according to the new style, January 22. But this date remained in the memory of people. In St. Petersburg there is even a cemetery in memory of the victims of January 9 - ed.), the authorities began to panic. Indeed, crowds will move into the center of the city, led by a person with incomprehensible plans. Extremists have something to do with this. In the "tops" seized with horror, there was simply no sober-minded person who could work out an adequate line of behavior.

This was also explained by what happened on January 6th. During the Epiphany bathing on the Neva, which, according to tradition, was attended by the emperor, one of the artillery pieces fired a volley in the direction of the royal tent. The gun, intended for practice shooting, turned out to be a loaded live projectile, it exploded not far from the tent of Nicholas II. No one died, but a policeman was wounded. The investigation showed that it was an accident. But rumors spread around the city about an assassination attempt on the king. The emperor hastily left the capital, went to Tsarskoye Selo.

The final decision on how to act on January 9, in fact, was to be taken by the city authorities. The army commanders received very vague instructions to keep the workers out of the city center. How is not clear. The Petersburg police, it can be said, did not receive any circulars at all. An indicative fact: at the head of one of the columns was the bailiff of the Narva unit, as if legalizing the procession with his presence. He was killed by the first volley.

tragic ending

On January 9, the workers who were moving in eight directions behaved exceptionally peacefully. They carried portraits of the king, icons, banners. There were women and children in the columns.

The soldiers acted differently. For example, near the Narva outpost they opened fire to kill. But the procession, moving along the current Obukhov Defense Avenue, was met by the troops on the bridge across the Obvodny Canal. The officer announced that he would not let people cross the bridge, and the rest was none of his business. And the workers bypassed the barrier on the ice of the Neva. It was they who were met with fire on Palace Square.

The exact number of people who died on January 9, 1905 is still unknown. They call different numbers - from 60 to 1000.

We can say that on this day the First Russian Revolution began. Russian empire rushed to its ruin.

On January 22 (9 according to the old style), 1905, the troops and the police broke up a peaceful procession of St. Petersburg workers who were going to the Winter Palace to hand Nicholas II a collective petition about the needs of the workers. In the course of the demonstration, as Maxim Gorky described the events in his famous novel The Life of Klim Samgin, ordinary people also joined the workers. The bullets flew at them too. Many were trampled down by a frightened crowd of demonstrators who rushed to run after the execution began.

Everything that happened in St. Petersburg on January 22 went down in history under the name "Bloody Sunday". To a large extent it is bloody events that weekend predetermined the further decline of the Russian Empire.

But like any global event that turned the course of history, "Bloody Sunday" gave rise to a lot of rumors and mysteries, which hardly anyone can unravel after 109 years. What are these riddles - in the selection of "RG".

1. Proletarian solidarity or a cunning conspiracy?

The spark from which the flame flared up was the dismissal of four workers from the Putilov factory in St. Petersburg, famous for the fact that at one time the first cannonball was cast there and the production of railway rails was launched. “When the demand for their return was not satisfied,” writes an eyewitness to what was happening, “the plant immediately became very friendly. they sent a deputation to other factories with a message of their demands and a proposal to join. Thousands and tens of thousands of workers began to join the movement. As a result, 26,000 people were on strike. A meeting of Russian factory workers in St. Petersburg, headed by priest Georgy Gapon, prepared a petition for the needs of the workers and residents of St. Petersburg. The main idea there was the convening of a people's representation on the terms of universal, secret and equal voting. In addition to this, a number of political and economic demands were put forward, such as freedom and inviolability of the person, freedom of speech, press, assembly, freedom of conscience in matters of religion, public education at public expense, equality of all before the law, responsibility of ministers to the people, guarantees legitimacy of government, replacement of indirect taxes with direct progressive income tax, the introduction of an 8-hour working day, amnesty for political prisoners, separation of church and state The petition ended with a direct appeal to the king. Moreover, this idea belonged to Gapon himself and was expressed by him long before the January events. Menshevik A. A. Sukhov recalled that back in the spring of 1904, Gapon, in a conversation with workers, developed his idea: “The officials interfere with the people, but the people will come to an agreement with the tsar.

However, there is no smoke without fire. Therefore, subsequently, both the monarchist-minded parties and movements, and the Russian emigration assessed the Sunday procession as nothing more than a carefully prepared conspiracy, one of the developers of which was Leon Trotsky, and whose main goal was to kill the tsar. The workers were simply set up, as they say. And Gapon was chosen as the leader of the uprising only because he was popular among the workers of St. Petersburg. Peaceful manifestations were not planned. According to the plan of the engineer and active revolutionary Peter Rutenberg, clashes and a general uprising were to take place, the weapons for which were already available. And it was delivered from abroad, in particular, Japan. Ideally, the king should have gone out to the people. And the conspirators planned to kill the king. But was it really so? Or was it still ordinary proletarian solidarity? The workers were simply very annoyed by the fact that they were forced to work seven days a week, paid little and irregularly, and, in addition, they were fired. And then it went and went.

2. A provocateur or an agent of the tsarist secret police?

Around George Gapon, a half-educated priest (at one time he abandoned the Poltava Theological Seminary), there were always many legends. How could this young man, although, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, possessed a bright appearance and outstanding oratorical qualities, become the leader of the workers?

In the notes of the prosecutor of the St. Petersburg Court of Justice to the Minister of Justice dated January 4-9, 1905, there is such a note: “The named priest has acquired extraordinary importance in the eyes of the people. Most consider him a prophet who came from God to protect the working people. To this, legends about him are added invulnerability, elusiveness, etc. Women speak of him with tears in their eyes. Relying on the religiosity of the vast majority of workers, Gapon carried away the entire mass of factory workers and artisans, so that at present about 200,000 people are participating in the movement. Using precisely this side of the moral forces of a Russian commoner, Gapon, in the words of one person, "slapped" the revolutionaries, who lost all significance in these unrest, issuing only 3 proclamations in an insignificant number. By order of Father Gapon, the workers drive agitators away from themselves and destroy leaflets, blindly follow her spiritual father. With this way of thinking of the crowd, she undoubtedly firmly and convincedly believes in the rightness of his desire to submit a petition to the king and have an answer from him, believing that if students are persecuted for their propaganda and demonstrations, then an attack on a crowd going to the king with a cross and a priest will be clear evidence of the impossibility for the subjects of the king to ask him for their needs.

During Soviet times, the historical literature was dominated by the version according to which Gapon was an agent provocateur of the tsarist secret police. “Back in 1904, before the Putilov strike,” the “Short Course of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks” said, “with the help of the provocateur priest Gapon, the police created their own organization among the workers - the Assembly of Russian Factory Workers.” This organization had its branches in When the strike began, priest Gapon at the meetings of his society proposed a provocative plan: on January 9, let all the workers gather and in a peaceful procession with banners and royal portraits go to the Winter Palace and submit a petition (request) to the tsar about their needs. they say, he will go out to the people, listen and satisfy their demands. Gapon undertook to help the tsarist secret police: to cause the execution of workers and drown the labor movement in blood.

Although for some reason Lenin's statements were completely forgotten in the "Short Course". A few days after January 9 (22), V. I. Lenin wrote in the article "Revolutionary Days": "Letters from Gapon, written by him after the massacre on January 9, that "we have no tsar", calling him to fight for freedom etc. - all these are facts that speak in favor of his honesty and sincerity, because such powerful agitation for the continuation of the uprising could no longer be included in the tasks of a provocateur. Further, Lenin wrote that the question of Gapon's sincerity "could be decided only by unfolding historical events, only by facts, facts and facts. And the facts decided this question in favor of Gapon." After the arrival of Gapon abroad, when he set about preparing an armed uprising, the revolutionaries openly recognized him as their colleague. However, after the return of Gapon to Russia after the Manifesto of October 17, the old enmity flared up with renewed vigor.

Another common myth about Gapon was that he was a paid agent of the tsarist secret police. The studies of modern historians do not confirm this version, since it has no documentary basis. So, according to the research of the historian-archivist S. I. Potolov, Gapon cannot be considered an agent of the tsarist secret police, since he was never listed in the lists and file cabinets of agents of the security department. In addition, until 1905, Gapon legally could not be an agent of the security department, since the law strictly prohibited the recruitment of representatives of the clergy as agents. Gapon cannot be considered an agent of the Okhrana for factual reasons, since he has never been engaged in intelligence activities. Gapon is not involved in the extradition of a single person to the police who would be arrested or punished on his tip. There is not a single denunciation written by Gapon. According to the historian I. N. Ksenofontov, all attempts by Soviet ideologists to portray Gapon as a police agent were based on the juggling of facts.

Although Gapon, of course, cooperated with the Police Department and even received large sums of money from him. But this cooperation was not of the nature of undercover activity. According to Generals A. I. Spiridovich and A. V. Gerasimov, Gapon was invited to cooperate with the Police Department not as an agent, but as an organizer and agitator. Gapon's task was to fight the influence of revolutionary propagandists and convince the workers of the advantages of peaceful methods of fighting for their interests. In accordance with this attitude, Gapon set up and his students explained to the workers the advantages of legal methods of struggle. The police department, considering this activity useful for the state, supported Gapon and from time to time supplied him with sums of money. Gapon himself, as leader of the "Assembly", went to officials from the Police Department and made reports to them on the state of the labor issue in St. Petersburg. Gapon did not hide his relationship with the Police Department and the receipt of money from him from his workers. Living abroad, in his autobiography, Gapon described the history of his relationship with the Police Department, in which he explained the fact of receiving money from the police.

Did he know what he was leading the workers on January 9 (22)? Here is what Gapon himself wrote: "January 9 is a fatal misunderstanding. In this, in any case, it is not society that is to blame with me at the head ... I really went to the tsar with naive faith for the truth, and the phrase:" at the cost of our own life guarantee the inviolability of the sovereign's personality" was not an empty phrase. But if for me and for my faithful comrades the person of the sovereign was and is sacred, then the good of the Russian people is dearest to us. That is why, already knowing the day before 9 that they would shoot, I went to front ranks, at the head, under the bullets and bayonets of soldiers, in order to testify with their blood to the truth - namely, the urgency of renewing Russia on the basis of truth. (G. A. Gapon. Letter to the Minister of Internal Affairs ").

3. Who killed Gapon?

In March 1906, Georgy Gapon left St. Petersburg on the Finnish Railway and did not return. According to the workers, he went to a business meeting with a representative of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. When leaving, Gapon did not take any things or weapons with him, and promised to return by evening. The workers were worried that something bad had happened to him. But no one did much research.

It was only in mid-April that reports appeared in the newspapers that Gapon had been killed by Peter Rutenberg, a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. It was reported that Gapon was strangled with a rope and his corpse was hanging on one of the empty dachas near St. Petersburg. The messages have been confirmed. On April 30, at the dacha of Zverzhinskaya in Ozerki, the body of a murdered man was found, who by all signs resembled Gapon. The workers of the Gapon organizations confirmed that the murdered man was Georgy Gapon. An autopsy showed that death was due to strangulation. According to preliminary data, Gapon was invited to the dacha by a person well known to him, was attacked and strangled with a rope and hung on a hook driven into the wall. At least 3-4 people were involved in the murder. The person who rented the dacha was identified by a janitor from a photograph. It turned out to be engineer Peter Rutenberg.

Rutenberg himself did not admit to the allegations and subsequently claimed that Gapon was killed by the workers. According to a certain "hunter for provocateurs" Burtsev, Gapon was strangled with his own hand by a certain Derental, a professional killer from the entourage of the terrorist B. Savinkov.

4. How many victims were there?

The "Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks" contained the following data: more than 1,000 killed and more than 2,000 wounded. at the same time, in his article "Revolutionary Days" in the newspaper "Vperyod" Lenin wrote: the figure cannot be complete, because even during the day (not to mention the night) it would be impossible to count all the dead and wounded in all the skirmishes.

In comparison with him, the writer V. D. Bonch-Bruevich tried to somehow substantiate such figures (in his article of 1929). He proceeded from the fact that 12 companies of different regiments fired 32 volleys, a total of 2861 shots. Having allowed 16 misfires per volley per company, for 110 shots, Bonch-Bruevich threw off 15 percent, that is, 430 shots, attributed the same number to misses, received 2000 hits in the remainder and came to the conclusion that at least 4 thousand people suffered. His methodology was thoroughly criticized by the historian S. N. Semanov in his book Bloody Sunday. For example, Bonch-Bruyevich considered a volley of two companies of grenadiers at the Sampsonievsky bridge (220 shots), while in fact no shots were fired at this place. Not 100 soldiers fired at the Alexander Garden, as Bonch-Bruevich believed, but 68. In addition, the even distribution of hits is completely incorrect - one bullet per person (many received several wounds, which was registered by hospital doctors); and part of the soldiers deliberately fired upwards. Semanov was in solidarity with the Bolshevik V.I. Nevsky (who considered the most plausible total figure 800-1000 people), without specifying how many were killed and how many were wounded, although Nevsky gave such a division in his article of 1922: “The figures of five or more thousand, which were called in the early days, are clearly incorrect. You can approximately determine the number of the wounded from 450 up to 800 and killed from 150 to 200".

According to the same Semanov, the government first reported that only 76 people were killed and 223 were wounded, then they made an amendment that 130 were killed and 229 were wounded. To this it must be added that a leaflet issued by the RSDLP immediately after the events of January 9 stated that "at least 150 people were killed, but many hundreds were wounded."

According to the modern publicist O. A. Platonov, on January 9, 96 were killed (including the police officer) and up to 333 were wounded, of which 34 more people died by the old style by January 27 (including one assistant bailiff). Thus, in total, 130 people were killed and died of wounds and about 300 were injured.

5. Come out the king to the balcony ...

"A hard day! There were serious riots in St. Petersburg due to the desire of the workers to reach the Winter Palace. The troops had to shoot in different parts of the city, there were many killed and wounded. Lord, how painful and hard! "- wrote Nicholas II after the events in St. Petersburg .

Baron Wrangel’s comment is noteworthy: “One thing seems certain to me: if the Sovereign came out onto the balcony, if he listened to the people one way or another, nothing would happen, except that the tsar would become more popular than he was ... How the prestige of his great-grandfather, Nicholas I, was strengthened, after his appearance during the cholera riot on Sennaya Square! But the Tsar was only Nicholas II, and not the Second Nicholas ... "The Tsar did not go anywhere. And what happened happened.

6. A sign from above?

According to eyewitnesses, during the dispersal of the procession on January 9, a rare natural phenomenon was observed in the sky of St. Petersburg - a halo. According to the memoirs of the writer L. Ya. Gurevich, “in the cloudy, hazy sky, the cloudy-red sun gave two reflections around itself in the fog, and it seemed to the eyes that there were three suns in the sky. Then, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, an unusual bright rainbow in winter lit up in the sky, and when it dimmed and disappeared, a snow storm arose.

Other witnesses saw a similar picture. According to scientists, a similar natural phenomenon is observed in frosty weather and is caused by the refraction of sunlight in ice crystals floating in the atmosphere. Visually, it manifests itself in the form of false suns (parhelia), circles, rainbows or solar pillars. In the old days, such phenomena were considered as heavenly signs, foreshadowing trouble.

January 9 (according to the new style, January 22) 1905 is an important historical event in the modern history of Russia. On this day, with the tacit consent of Emperor Nicholas II, a 150,000-strong procession of workers was shot in St. Petersburg, who were going to hand over to the tsar a petition signed by tens of thousands of Petersburgers with a request for reforms.

On the eve of the procession, the Bolsheviks issued a proclamation "To all St. Petersburg workers", in which they explained the futility and danger of the procession conceived by Gapon.

On January 9, about 150,000 workers took to the streets of St. Petersburg. The columns headed by Gapon headed for the Winter Palace.

According to official figures, 96 people were killed and 330 wounded, according to unofficial data - more than a thousand killed and two thousand wounded.

According to journalists from St. Petersburg newspapers, the number of killed and wounded was about 4.9 thousand people.

The murdered police secretly buried at night at the Preobrazhensky, Mitrofanevsky, Uspensky and Smolensky cemeteries.