The Road to Bloody Sunday: The Role of Father Gapon and the Petersburg Massacre of 1905

by Walter Sablinsky

Overview

Drawing on all available documents, Walter Sablinsky reappraises the events, especially the role of the volatile and often unpredictable Father Gcorgii Gapon. the young Orthodox priest who inspired and led the workers' organization.

Originally published in 1976.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691610689
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Studies of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University , #580
Pages:	430
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

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The Road to Bloody Sunday

Father Gapon and the St. Petersburg Massacre of 1905

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By Walter Sablinsky

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1976 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05233-5

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: St. Petersburg Workers before 1905

In Russia, fortunately, there is no working class in the Western sense; therefore, there is no labor problem.

From a circular of the ministry of finance, 1895

The history of Russia in the final decades of the imperial period is intrinsically linked to the course of that nation's rapid industrial development and its social, economic, and political ramifications. It could safely be said that everything in Russia, from life in the peasant huts to life in the palaces, was in some way affected by the new forces shaping Russian society. The Russian proletariat, a product of industrial growth, emerged in the course of the nineteenth century as a new class requiring adjustment and integration into the existing social structure. This process, characterized by the displacement of large bodies of the peasantry moving into the cities in search of employment, imposed a tremendous strain on the traditional patterns of Russian life. Working in the primitive conditions of early industrialization, the peasant newcomers were confronted by unfamiliar social relationships, a frustrating regime of factory discipline, and the distressing conditions of urban life. Russian society offered the new social group no means to redress its grievances. As a result, the dissatisfaction of the workers bubbled to the surface in sporadic outbreaks of unrest — the faster the pace of industrial development, the greater the pressure of latent discontent. How to recognize and satisfy the needs of the growing labor force was a dilemma that racked the Russian autocracy until its final days.

The working class began to emerge as a socially significant force during the period of industrial expansion that followed the emancipation of the peasantry in 1861. Prior to the emancipation, industrial workers were usually serfs either working in the factories of their masters or paying quit-rent to their masters from wages earned in factories. Their masters retained complete authority and legal control over them. Workers in the cities, still tied to the landowners' estates, were not separated from the peasant masses. In most cases they remained in the cities only temporarily, returning to the villages when their work was required on the land. Until the emancipation, most of the working class was made up of seasonal workers (otkhodniki) who left their villages for certain periods to seek additional income in the factories.

This transient labor force never established deep roots in the towns. Peasants working in the factories were heavily exploited and, like serfs, had no means of redress. Despite the frightful conditions under which they worked and lived, the pittance they received as wages was a significant addition to their income from the land. The poverty of the villages compelled them to seek this additional employment and to tolerate the miserable conditions of factory life. Perhaps the knowledge that they would eventually return to their village homes and families made life in the factories more bearable.

Although the emancipation settlement perpetuated significant restraints to peasant mobility, it nevertheless provided better opportunities for peasants to work in the cities and thus make possible the emergence of a permanent working class in urban areas. The increased mobility of the peasant population, the breakdown of ties to the land, and the growth of the Russian population in the period following the emancipation were principal factors contributing to rapid industrial development. The population of the European provinces of Russia in 1863 was slightly over 61 million (74 million for the whole empire); by the time of the census of 1897, it had increased to 93.78 million and by 1905 to 107.4 million. In the period 1863 to 1905, the population of European Russia increased by approximately 70 percent, with an annual increase of about 1.5 percent. Most significant in these figures was the growth of the urban population, particularly the working class. In 1863, city dwellers accounted for 6.1 million or 9.9 percent of the population of European Russia, while by 1897 their number had risen to 12 million, or 12.8 percent; i.e. while the rural population rose by 48.5 percent, its urban counterpart increased by 97 percent. The distribution of this urban population growth in the period of economic boom during the 1890s was primarily concentrated around certain industries and in specific geographic areas.

Although Russia's industrial expansion in the 1890s was impressive, it was still primarily an agricultural country. As late as 1914, over 85 percent of the population was still rural. Industry, employing only 5 percent of the entire labor force, accounted for approximately one-fifth of the income, while the agricultural sector, engaging two-thirds of the labor force, accounted for one-half of the national income. Just before World War I, Russian agriculture was still producing more than twice the value of industrial goods. While the industrial sector of the Russian economy showed vigorous growth, its agricultural sector lagged far behind, barely keeping up with the increase in population. Indices of total economic growth are less impressive than the more frequently cited data for the industrial sector alone.

The unbalanced nature of the Russian economy and the state policy of promoting industrialization placed a heavy burden on the agricultural sector, particularly on the peasantry. Tied to the commune and heavily taxed, the ever-increasing rural population lacked the investment capital needed to make appreciable improvements in land productivity. Whatever surplus the peasant produced was taxed away and channeled into the favored industrial sector. The disparity of prices for industrial goods and agricultural products further contributed to the misery of the rural population. This was the price Russia paid to overcome backwardness. In the words of the principal architect of Russian industrialization, Minister of Finance Sergei Witte, "The Russian peasant paid for industrialization not from surplus but out of current necessities." Overpopulation and depressed conditions in the countryside filled the peasants with a sense of futility and bitterness. Compelled to supplement their meager earnings from the land, they flooded the cities in search of work. The misery of factory life further reinforced their long-standing hatred of the existing social system.

The abundance of cheap labor was an advantage to the employers. The labor force, lacking in skills and education, was fluid in its composition, and workers were prone to frequent absenteeism and poor discipline. To compensate for the low qualifications of the work force, entrepreneurs substituted capital for labor, importing quantities of modern machinery concentrated in large production units. As a result, industry in Russia relied extensively on masses of unskilled labor while a small, skilled group of workers handled the machinery. These paradoxical policies led to the construction of large, modern plants, but perpetuated the backward state of the majority of industrial workers. Consequently, an inordinate number of workers were employed in large industrial units with distinct stratification between the few better-paid, skilled artisans and the multitude of poorly paid, unskilled laborers.

The influx of peasants into the urban centers accounted for most of the expansion of the working class, as well as for the increase in the urban population. In addition, a growing proportion of the urban population lived in large cities, some of which increased several times over during the last decades of the nineteenth century. A relatively small number of cities, thirty in all, contained about 40 percent of the entire urban population of the empire, and their populations grew at a considerably higher rate than the population of Russia as a whole. For example, peasants made up over 35 percent of the population of St. Petersburg in the 1860s. By 1900 peasants accounted for 908.7 thousand, or 63.1 percent, of the city's population, adding over a quarter of a million to the city rolls in the 1890s alone. Of this number, 78.1 percent (718.4 thousand) had been born outside the St. Petersburg guberniia (province). By 1902, the St. Petersburg guberniia listed 90 percent of its working class as migrants from other provinces.

The expansion of large industrial units paralleled the growth of major cities, and indeed larger industrial units in Russia increased at a considerably higher rate than those in the West. In 1879 only 7 percent of the enterprises in Russia employed over a thousand workers, 32.8 percent of the entire industrial labor force. In the period 1879-1902 (which includes the years of the economic boom), the number of enterprises employing between one hundred and five hundred workers increased by 78.3 percent, and their labor force by 76 percent, while those employing over a thousand increased by 203.5 percent and their labor force by 284.4 percent.

The average annual wage of Russian industrial workers in 1904 was 213.9 rubles, but wages varied extensively according to locality and type of industry. The average wages in large, major industrial plants were higher than those in textile mills and food-processing enterprises. Skilled workers in the metal industries and in skilled trades such as printing received the highest earnings. However, even in these favored industries, wages barely provided for a subsistence existence. Even workers receiving over 450 rubles annually were constantly in debt. It has been estimated that in 1905-1906 a 400-ruble minimum annual income was required to maintain a family in the city; yet, as late as 1912, 80 percent of the workers in St. Petersburg earned only 35 rubles a month. The disparity in wages is evident from a survey conducted in 1901 among the workers in the metal industries. The survey showed that the Putilov Works, the largest plant in Russia, employing close to twelve thousand workers, paid the highest average daily wage (1.85 rubles), but 74.84 percent of its workers received less than a ruble a day. In the textile industry the wages were much lower, between 20 and 30 rubles a month; women and children received even less. Long hours, poor sanitary conditions, and the absence of safety precautions compounded the miserable existence of Russian workers at the beginning of the twentieth century.

It would be wrong, however, to treat the Russian working class as a homogeneous social group. From the very beginning, socio-economic and cultural differences produced significant stratification between the masses of unskilled workers, barely surviving in squalid warrens, and the skilled workers able to afford a more comfortable life. As increasing numbers of workers took up permanent residency in the cities, there gradually developed an urbanized working-class elite. At the turn of the century this skilled elite, or "labor aristocracy" as it was called, constituted only 4 percent of the industrial labor force and earned between 600 and 700 rubles annually.

The differences between the labor aristocracy and the masses of unskilled workers were not only economic. The views and attitudes of the two groups differed greatly — from the irreverence and political radicalism of the more sophisticated workers, who were affected by revolutionary propaganda, to the extreme conservatism and backwardness of newly arrived peasants. The majority of unskilled workers were discomforted by the profound transformations the urban factory environment worked on their traditional ways of thinking. They sensed, with vague uneasiness, that the traditional values of peasant life did not suit their new role as factory workers. Proletarian life demanded another set of rules to live by, some framework to make the harsh, callous industrial world sensible and give a measure of human dignity to their lives. The labor aristocracy had already begun to establish itself in the urban world, but the longings of the working masses remained incoherent, pent-up and unrealized. Still, the heritage of a peasant background, the experience of a difficult adjustment to urban life, and the need for joint struggle to improve working conditions bound the labor aristocracy to the unskilled masses. In the great urban centers, where the labor force and complicated production processes were concentrated, the skilled workers gradually began to respond to the common need. Influenced by educational and ideological training, they began to expound a conscious, proletarian world view.

St. Petersburg, the largest city and the major industrial complex of the Russian empire, was surrounded by a smoldering ring of metal-processing plants, textile mills, and factories. The administrative, as well as commercial and cultural, center of the vast empire, St. Petersburg also boasted the largest working-class population. By the beginning of the century its population was 1,439,613, of which 287,886 could be classified as workers. Adding to this the members of workers' families gives slightly over 30 percent as the estimated proletarian component of the population. Although the economic recession of the first three years of the twentieth century affected the St. Petersburg economy severely, the defense-oriented industries of the capital revived dramatically after the beginning of the Russo- Japanese War in 1904. At the end of 1904, the number of workers employed in St. Petersburg was approximately 250 to 260 thousand. According to the census of 1910, only 10.5 percent returned to their villages for summer work, but a considerable number of those who remained in the city held land in villages, maintained families there, and insisted on being designated as peasants in official inquiries.

The wages in St. Petersburg were consistently higher than in most parts of Russia, averaging 336.17 rubles annually in 1904 (compared to 213.92 for European Russia as a whole). The cost of living in the capital was also higher, and earning extra income from the land was difficult. The wages of most workers barely reached subsistence level, and even the better-paid workers had to borrow or find extra work to make ends meet. In 1902 the administrations of state-owned plants engaged in defense production undertook an extensive survey to determine the budgetary requirements for workers in St. Petersburg. According to their estimations, a single worker required the following monthly minimum:

Lodg- Cloth- Pocket Incidental
Food ing ing
Expenses Expenses
Male worker     10
4     3
2.50 1.50
Female worker     8
4     2
2 1

Consequently, single male workers required 21 rubles a month and female workers 17 rubles minimum. It was also estimated that a worker supporting a family of four had to earn at least 51 rubles a month.

From these figures it is evident that wages of less than a ruble a day forced workers to deny themselves and their families basic necessities. The housing situation in St. Petersburg was particularly deplorable. The sum of 4 rubles paid only for a bed or a "corner" in a dormitory or private apartment, usually the cellar. The prevailing rents in St. Petersburg were excessively high — a two-room apartment in the central part of the city rented for nearly 30 rubles a month, clearly beyond the reach of workers, who had to seek housing in working-class districts and suburbs. The population increase in St. Petersburg, particularly among the working classes, far outstripped the construction of new housing. As a result, in the working-class quarters the average density of individuals per room in some districts was close to five, and workers often rented a portion of a room, a bed, or even part of a bed. Tenements and basements were filled to capacity. Each family had a "corner," partitioned by curtains, where husband and wife occupied a bed, with a child or two sleeping at their feet and an infant in a cradle hung from the ceiling. A survey of a working-class quarter (Vyborg district) covering 1,121 individuals counted 459 beds among them: "There were cases where three or four, even five individuals occupied one bed." The percentage of "corner" dwellers rose as high as 15.7 in the Neva district (Aleksandro-Nevskii district, as it was officially called), with an average of 1.8 individuals per bed. In Narva district the density of individuals per bed was 2.4.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Road to Bloody Sunday by Walter Sablinsky. Copyright © 1976 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• Preface, pg. ix
• CHAPTER I. Introduction: St. Petersburg Workers before 1905, pg. 1
• CHAPTER II. Father Georgii Gapon, pg. 34
• CHAPTER III. Zubatov in St. Petersburg, pg. 56
• CHAPTER IV. The Assembly of the Russian Factory and Mill Workers of the City of St. Petersburg, pg. 85
• CHAPTER V. “The Spring”: The Ministry of Sviatopolk-Mirskii, pg. 119
• CHAPTER VI. The Putilov Strike, pg. 143
• CHAPTER VII. The Turn to Politics, pg. 172
• CHAPTER VIII. “To the Tsar!”, pg. 198
• CHAPTER IX. Bloody Sunday: January 9, 1905, pg. 229
• CHAPTER X. Conclusion: St. Petersburg Workers after Bloody Sunday, pg. 272
• CHAPTER XI. Epilogue: The End of Father Gapon, pg. 292
• Appendix I. The Statutes of the Assembly, pg. 323
• Appendix II. The Petition of January 9, pg. 344
• Bibliography, pg. 351
• Index, pg. 405