Gapon G. A. (1870-1906), priest, security agent

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GAPON Georgy Apollonovich (1870-1906, station Ozerki on the outskirts of St. Petersburg), priest, political figure. Gapon graduated from St. Petersburg Spiritual Academy (1903). He lived in St. Petersburg from 1898, in 1900-02 served as the archpriest, then as the head of the second refuge of the Blue Cross, teaching Holy Scriptures at the Children’s Orphanage of Diligence dedicated to St. Olga. From the beginning of 1904 he served as a priest at St. Petersburg Transit Prison. In Autumn 1902, he was acquainted with the head of the Special Department of the Board of Police S. V. Zubatov who attracted Gapon to the work in the legal Society of Mutual Aid for Workers in the Mechanical Industry. After the retirement of Zubatov in the summer of 1903, Gapon headed the Society and in 1904 formed a new legal organisation of workers, called Assembly of Russian Factory and Plant Workers. The group of workers close to Gapon (his “staff") by the end of 1904 actually took the Assembly out of police control. Sittings of the "staff" were held in the flat of Gapon at 6 Tserkovnaya Street, now Blokhina Street. Gapon was one of the major initiators and organizers of the demonstration of workers on 9 January 1905 with a petition to Emperor Nicholas II, which ended with the military firing on the demonstrators (see "Bloody Sunday"). After the events of 9 January 1905, Gapon emigrated to Switzerland, where he tried to play the role of a non-party unifier of all revolutionary forces of Russia. With the help of the International Socialist Bureau, he organized a conference of Russian revolutionary parties in April 1905, and participated in the purchase of arms for Russian revolutionaries. After the publication of the Manifesto of 17 October 1905, he came back to St. Petersburg, and renewed contacts with the leaders of the former Assembly and with the police. He was murdered by a group of workers and soldiers on 28 March 1906 at the dacha rented by a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, engineer P. M. Rutenberg (Ozerki Station, intersection of Olginskaya Street and Varvarinskaya Street). Gapon was buried in Assumption Cemetery near the rail line of the Finnish railroad.

Works: The History of My Life. Мoscow, 1990.

Reference: Рутенберг П. М. Убийство Гапона: Записки. М., 1990; Ксенофонтов И. Н. Георгий Гапон: вымысел и правда. М., 1996.

A. G. Kalmykov. Gapon Georgy Apollonovich
Nicholas II, Emperor
Rutenberg Peter Moiseevich
Zubatov Sergey Vasilievich
Blokhina St./Saint Petersburg, city, house 6
Рутенберг П. М. Убийство Гапона: Записки. М., 1990
Ксенофонтов И. Н. Георгий Гапон: вымысел и правда. М., 1996
История моей жизни. М., 1990 Theological Academy
1903