Father Gapon had the double disadvantages of being a religious nutcase and a police spy. However with his icons and his prayers he for a while had a bigger influence in Russia’s working class than the Bolsheviks. This was written for the February 2005 issue of Socialist Resistance. In view of the the discussion around religion and politics I thought I might as well stick it up.

Marxists are certain of the fact that there will be revolutions in capitalist societies. However the people on the spot are often caught unaware when one breaks out and it can be the most unlikely groups who give the final shove to get the revolution moving.

On January 9th (old calendar, 22 January new) 1905 a police spy and priest, Father Gapon, led a demonstration of workers to present a petition to the Tsar in St Petersburg. Gapon had set up a union, the Association of Factory and Plant Workers, which would allow workers to discuss their grievances. These included having to work eleven hours a day six days a week in filthy, freezing factories, poverty wages and supervisors who used physical violence to control workers. Gapon’s union did not permit any discussion of politics. It organised libraries, social activities and insurance schemes. Many revolutionary socialists at the time considered it to be a scab union. Yet the demonstration came at the end of a week long strike that brought out 140 000 St Petersburg workers.

The majority of Gapon’s supporters were factory workers newly arrived from farming villages with all the backwardness and prejudices of the primitive Russian countryside. They knew their lives were hard but for them the Tsar was a good father surrounded by bad advisors. Gapon was organising large public meetings in the factories and recruited about 8000 members in St Petersburg. By contrast the Social Democratic (as revolutionary Marxists were then called) groups had about 5-600 members. At the same time their organisations had suffered badly from arrests, splits, and a shortage of money.

“We are insulted, we are not recognized as human beings”

Gapon’s supporters’ petition asked the Tsar for an eight-hour working day, separation of church and state, wage increases and universal suffrage to a constituent assembly. Part of it read “We are in great poverty, we are oppressed and weighed down with labours beyond our strength; we are insulted, we are not recognized as human beings, we are treated like slaves who must suffer their lot in silence…the terrible moment has come for us when it is better to die than to continue suffering intolerable torment.” The Tsar’s police accepted that part of the petition. At least 4600 were killed or wounded when the demonstrators tried to go through the police lines, many of them carrying religious icons and banners. The organisers had banned all political flags and banners.

Russia had seen a big growth in the numbers of its working class. They were denied political rights and civil rights. What began as a movement expressing the grievances from the factories quickly began making political demands. Russia’s absolute monarchy was not prepared to concede to them and tried to shoot the working class off the streets. Instead the attempt at counter revolution spawned a real revolution.

That night Gapon told a mass meeting “we non longer have a Tsar.” Groups of workers took to the streets looking for weapons and shouting “down with the Tsar”. By January 17 650 factories in St Petersburg were on strike and across Russia 400 000 workers were on strike. All across the country workers’ demonstrations were met with murderous rifle fire.

Ebbs and flows

Over the following months the revolution ebbed and flowed. Factory workers were starved back to work in the cities while in the countryside peasants and agricultural labourers were drawn into the revolution. In some areas they took control of the land. When the Russian fleet was destroyed in May in a battle with the Japanese navy sailors in Odessa mutinied and took control of the ships.

By the end of the summer the war with Japan had ended, apparently removing a major grievance from the soldiers and sailors. The government had made some minor concessions and there were many fewer strikes in the big factories. But lots of other groups of workers were coming out on strike. These were workers who hadn’t been radicalised by the socialist organisations but were inspired by the strikes and the revolution itself. These included waiters, domestic servants and slaughterhouse workers, some of the most exploited and disorganised groups.

In October in Moscow printers, post and rail workers went on strike. Lenin wrote, “ the economic strike developed into a political strike and the latter into an insurrection.

Russia at that time did not have anything like our reformist Labour Party to derail the revolutionary process. Instead the workers established strike committees with representatives elected in the factories. By the end of October the St. Petersburg committee, or soviet, had representatives from 96 factories, 5 unions and the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries. The soviet was chaired by 27 year old Leon Trotsky. Other soviets were formed across Russia as the working class began to take the running of society into its own hands.

The soviet called a general strike at the end of October. But the months of struggle had exhausted the city’s workers and the strike was called off on November 12. There were arrests, sackings and beatings. Yet in Moscow things were moving at a different rhythm and the troops mutinied. They were joined by striking janitors, cooks and even policemen as the entire working class was being swept along by the revolutionary wave. In December there were armed insurrections in Moscow and other cities which were crushed with artillery.

The defeat of the St Petersburg strikes and the quelling of the Moscow insurrection seemed to be Tsarism’s final victory. Its reprieve was only temporary. Revolutionary Marxism became influential amongst tens of thousands of workers. The Tsar was now despised by millions of workers and peasants who had venerated him the previous year. Workers had moved from trusting priests and sending petitions to political strikes and armed insurrection. They had established workers’ control over factories and city districts. The Bolsheviks had learned the lessons that would allow them to lead the Russian class to victory in 1917.