Assembly of Russian Factory and Mill Workers of St. Petersburg

The character of the legal workers' society

The Assembly of Russian Factory and Mill Workers of the City of St. Petersburg («Собрание русских фабрично-заводских рабочих г. Санкт-Петербурга») began activity in the autumn of 1903 and received the approval of Minister of the Interior Plehve on 15 (28) February 1904. On paper it aimed to defend workers' rights and raise their moral and religious level; in practice it was patronized and funded by the Police Department, the St. Petersburg Okhrana and the city governorship. In his memoirs Gapon admitted accepting 400 rubles offered to him at the security department and entering the sum in the society's books as an anonymous donation. Radical circles therefore treated it as a "police union".

History

Its parent bodies were the legal society «Общество взаимопомощи рабочих в механическом производстве», created in Moscow in May 1901, and the Zubatov-style St Petersburg «Общество взаимного вспомоществования рабочих в механическом производстве». When Zubatov left St Petersburg in August 1903 he asked Gapon not to abandon the workers' organization; Gapon proposed to definitively drop the form of the Moscow organization and free it from the tutelage of administrative nannies. Gapon had tried to create the society from spring 1903 using his connections with the Police Department (S. V. Zubatov, then V. K. Plehve), and on the basis of the Zubatov-style society founded in St Petersburg in August 1903 he became its de facto leader. With workers including N. M. Varnashyov, N. A. Stepanov, I. V. Vasilyev, F. M. Gorbachyov, S. V. Kladovikov and S. E. Ustyuzhanin he drafted a charter and submitted it to the Ministry of Internal Affairs for approval. The circle of A. E. Karelin, whose members considered underground conspiratorial work ineffective, joined in autumn 1903. The charter approved by Plehve on 15 (28) February 1904 set out the aims of enabling members to spend free time reasonably and soberly, spreading enlightenment on the basis of Russian national self-consciousness, and improving working and living conditions; full membership was restricted to Russian workers of Russian origin and Christian confession.

At the head stood a circle of responsible persons made up of the founders; day-to-day management belonged to a Board elected by the general assembly and confirmed in office by the city governor. The Representative of the Assembly was confirmed by the city governor and was its chief leader and controller; Gapon was elected Representative for the first three-year term. The first meeting took place on 11 (24) April 1904 in the tea-club of the Vyborg branch (Orenburgskaya st. 23) in the presence of city governor I. A. Fullon. By the end of 1904, 11 district branches had been formed with more than 10,000 participants. All branches worked daily from 7 p.m., with tea-rooms, libraries and reading rooms and circles (mathematics, music, foreign languages, gymnastics); lectures, meetings and musical and dance evenings were held on Wednesdays and Sundays, and women took an active part. Political questions were kept off the public agenda, though leaders did not hide during breaks that such caution was forced and temporary.

Plehve was killed on 15 (28) July 1904 by an SR terrorist act, and Sviatopolk-Mirsky became Minister of Internal Affairs on 26 August (8 September) 1904; the ensuing "spring of Sviatopolk-Mirsky" activated public life. Zemstvo petitions were read and discussed, and workers wanted to come out with a petition of their own while Gapon refused. At the end of 1904 serious disagreements arose between Gapon, who had great influence among the less class-conscious workers who formed the bulk of the membership, and the Board grouped around the Karelins, which had more influence among "conscious" workers. In December 1904 the "staff opposition" was ready to topple Gapon, but the dismissal of several Assembly members at the Putilov plant forced the leadership to forget internal differences and consolidate in the struggle for workers' rights.

In December 1904 a rumour spread among Putilov workers that four workers had been dismissed without warning on the recommendation of foreman Tetyavkin, the real reason being their membership in the Assembly. On 28 December 1904 (10 January 1905) a deputation headed by Gapon asked director S. I. Smirnov to rehire the dismissed workers, and Smirnov categorically refused. On 2 (15) January 1905 an emergency meeting of the Putilov branch decided to stop work from the next day and demand the foreman's dismissal and the rehiring of the dismissed; the strike began at 8 a.m. on 3 (16) January 1905. On 4 (17) January the strikers added demands including an 8-hour day, three-shift work, abolition of overtime, higher pay for unskilled labourers, better sanitation and free medical care. The Franco-Russian Society plant (2,000 workers) struck the same day, and by the morning of 7 (20) January all large plants and factories in St Petersburg had struck.

Radicalized Assembly workers raised the idea of a petition to the tsar; Gapon after hesitation backed it and proposed to organize a mass procession to the Winter Palace. On 5 (18) January 1905 the text was discussed with social-democrats, who offered their own variant, all rejected by Gapon, who wrote his own version on the night of 6–7 January. The text was discussed and approved on 7–8 January; its main demand was the immediate convocation of a Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal, secret and equal voting, plus amnesty for political prisoners, civil rights and freedoms, replacement of indirect taxes by a progressive income tax, an 8-hour day and so on.

On 9 (22) January 1905 the columns were fired on and dispersed by regular army units. By official government data 130 were killed and 299 wounded; other official figures record 96 dead and 333 injured, or 132 killed. Anti-government sources claimed more than 4,000 dead, while moderate estimates average around 1,000 killed or wounded. On 10 (23) January 1905 the Assembly's activity was banned and its bank account of 3,000 rubles and its property were seized. It resumed activity after the October Manifesto in November 1905, Gapon was again elected its leader, and Count Witte's government released more than 30,000 rubles for its restoration. As a result of struggles among government groupings it was definitively closed in February 1906, and Gapon was killed at Ozerki in March of that year.

Examples

On Sunday 22 January [O.S. 9 January] 1905 the procession was led by Father Gapon toward the Winter Palace, and demonstrators were fired upon by Imperial Guard soldiers. In the pre-dawn dark striking workers and their families gathered at six points in the industrial outskirts, carrying religious icons and singing hymns and "God Save the Tsar!"; one account has a crowd of "more than 3,000" moving toward the Winter Palace without police interference. Women, children and the elderly were initially meant to lead, with Vera Karelina among Gapon's inner circle encouraging women to take part though expecting casualties.

The Putilov incident was the immediate trigger: in December 1904 six workers at the Putilov Ironworks were fired because of their Assembly membership, the manager claiming unrelated reasons. Virtually the entire Putilov workforce struck when the manager refused to rehire them, and sympathy strikes raised the number of strikers to 150,000 in 382 factories. By 21 January [O.S. 8 January] 1905 the city had no electricity and no newspapers.

The decision to prepare and present the petition was made during discussions on the evening of 19 January [O.S. 6 January] 1905 at the headquarters of Gapon's movement, the "Gapon Hall" on the Shlisselburg Trakt. The petition, drafted in respectful terms by Gapon himself, called for improved working conditions, fairer wages, a reduction of the working day to eight hours and the introduction of universal suffrage. On the same day, at a meeting of society members in the «Старый Ташкент» tavern beyond the Narva Gate (now the site of the Children's Park named after 9 January), the petition text was approved and the decision to march to the Winter Palace was taken.

Under Gapon's and his close workers' influence, workers drove representatives of the revolutionary parties out of their meetings, and on Gapon's initiative a wreath from the workers of Petersburg was made and laid on the grave of the former Minister of Internal Affairs V. K. Plehve.

Distinctions

The march was not revolutionary, though it was done against the permission of the public authorities. Political groups such as the Bolsheviks, Mensheviks and Social Revolutionary Party disapproved of the procession because of its lack of political demands, and Gapon even encouraged followers to tear up leaflets supporting revolutionary aims; the majority of Russian workers retained traditional conservative values of Orthodoxy, faith in the autocracy and indifference to political life. Workers petitioned the tsar as the God-appointed protector of the people, in subservient terms, ending with the reminder of the tsar's obligation and the words «And if Thou dost not so order and dost not respond to our pleas we will die here in this square before Thy palace». Gapon had an ambiguous relationship with the tsarist authorities and sent a copy of the petition to the Minister of the Interior with notice of his intention to lead the procession.

The periodization for 1904–1905 differs by reference. Russian Wikipedia dates the activity to 1904–1906, from the charter's approval in February 1904 to the final closure in February 1906, while also recording that activity is dated from August 1903. The St Petersburg encyclopedia states that the society was dissolved and its property confiscated after 9 January 1905, and other encyclopedia headnotes quoted in the same reference date its existence to 1903–January 1905. Membership figures conflict too: Russian Wikipedia and the St Petersburg encyclopedia give more than 10,000 members by the end of 1904, while the encyclopedia headnote reproduced in the same reference gives 8,000; the number of attendees at meetings was several times larger.

The authorship of the petition text also needs qualification. The initial text was composed by Gapon, then edited by Mensheviks and liberals (reflecting several demands of the RSDLP minimum programme), after which Gapon gave it the form of a loyal address to the tsar. Unlike a trade union proper, the Assembly framed its purpose as moral and religious improvement and mutual aid and described improving relations with employers and the government "without violent disruption of law and order".

Relations

The Assembly was connected to the St Petersburg Okhrana, the Police Department and the city governorship, whose agents patronized and funded it. Its predecessor and model was the Zubatov society, and Zubatov himself asked Gapon not to abandon the workers' organization when he left Petersburg in August 1903. In the lineage of the political police, Gapon's Assembly belongs to the line of Zubatov's "police socialism" experiments; the same Zubatov who created the system of legal workers' organizations was head of the Moscow security department (1896–1902) and of the Special Section of the Police Department (1902–1903) before his dismissal in 1903.

The circle of A. E. Karelin, whose members considered underground conspiratorial work ineffective and sought paths to open activity among workers, joined the society in autumn 1903 on Vasilyevsky Island. In September 1903 Karelin described Gapon as an interesting figure in the workers' movement, saying people claimed he was a revolutionary in his soul.

The Assembly's petition and procession are the direct antecedent of the 1905 Revolution, whose active phase Bloody Sunday is considered to have started; the events provoked public outrage and massive strikes spreading to the industrial centres of the empire, and historians such as Lionel Kochan treat Bloody Sunday as a key event leading to 1917.

Gapon led the Assembly and was killed in March 1906. Its leaders were the initiators of the peaceful procession with the petition, and its membership and supporters included workers later prominent in the labour movement such as N. M. Varnashyov, A. E. Karelin, D. V. Kuzin, V. M. Karelina and I. M. Kharitonov.