BLOODY OR RED SUNDAY OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

 


By 1905, the aging Russian autocracy was in terminal decline. Strikes, unrest, and mutiny sprang up across the vast Russian landscape where, for centuries, people had been told that the Tsar was a saintly father figure; inviolable, all-powerful, and divinely appointed.

Demonstrations led by Father Georgy Gapon in St. Petersburg on 22 January 1905 helped to shatter this illusion. Fr. Gapon was a charismatic speaker and effective organizer who took an interest in the working and lower classes of the Russian cities. Tsarist soldiers opened fire on protesters, killing 140 to 240 people and injuring 33 as per official figures. The crowd had been pro-Tsar, carrying pictures and banners of Tsar Nicholas II, and only wished to present a petition to him calling for reforms such as limitations on state officials' power, improvements to working conditions and hours, and the introduction of a national. This Bloody Sunday or Red Sunday with a series of events sparked the revolution and helped turn the tide against the autocracy.

By its conclusion, the revolution had succeeded only partially in dismantling the complete absolutist system that ruled over Russia. The October Manifesto and the constitution of 1906 established a State Duma and a multi-party system, but the Tsar retained great power for himself.

The reforms quelled the immediate protests, but the House of Romanov would last scarcely another decade before it collapsed in the 1917 revolution.


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