a provocateur or “deceived by insidious friends”?

On April 30, 1906, at the dacha of Zverzhinskaya in Ozerki, near St. Petersburg, Georgy Apollonovich Gapon was found hanged.

Georgy Gapon, who was born in 1870, studied at the Poltava Theological Seminary, after which he served for some time as a zemstvo statistician. He took the priesthood, then soon entered the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, and after graduating from the latter he received a priest’s job in the St. Petersburg transit prison.

While still a student at the academy, Gapon was connected with the workers and became close to the head of the Moscow security department, Sergei Zubatov, and other senior police officers. He founded the “Society of Factory and Factory Workers” in St. Petersburg and was its chairman.

By December 1904, the Gapon Society of Factory Workers already had district organizations throughout St. Petersburg.

On the initiative of Gapon, a petition was drawn up to Nicholas II, which included a number of political and economic demands, and a procession of workers to the tsar was organized on January 9, 1905, which ended with the execution of a peaceful demonstration. Here is how Georgy Gapon himself recalled what happened in the “History of my life” he wrote (Kniga publishing house, Moscow, 1990):

“It was the first of all the processions that ever walked through the streets of St. Petersburg, which had the goal of asking the sovereign to recognize the rights of the people. <...> I warned the people that those who carried the banners might fall first when they started shooting, but in response to this, a crowd of people rushed forward, challenging the dangerous position. <...> In the first row stood those who carried the royal portrait in a wide frame, in the second row they carried banners and images, and I walked in the middle. A crowd followed us, about 20,000 men, women, old and young. Despite the severe cold, everyone walked without hats, filled with a sincere desire to see the king, in order to … cry out their grief on the chest of the king-father.

<...> The crowd first knelt, and then lay flat, trying to protect their heads from a hail of bullets, while the back ranks took to flight. <...> With a few survivors, I stood and looked at the bodies spread around me. I called out to them: “Get up!”, but they continued to lie. Why don’t they get up? I looked at them again and noticed how lifeless their hands lay and how trickles of blood ran across the snow. Then I understood everything. <…> Horror seized me. My brain was pierced by the thought: and all this was done by the “father-king”. <...> In this moment of despair, someone took my hand and led me to a side street a few steps from the place of the massacre. There was no point in resisting. What more could I do? “We no longer have a king,” I exclaimed. Reluctantly I gave myself into the hands of my saviors … “

Among the saviors was the Socialist-Revolutionary Peter (Pinchas) Rutenberg.

After the bloody January 9, Georgy Gapon fled abroad. There he tried to establish contact with the revolutionary emigration, met with Georgy Plekhanov, Peter Kropotkin, Vladimir Lenin.

“The pronoun “I” almost never left his lips: it turned out that until January 9 and on that day he, and only he, directed, led, showed reasonable initiative, etc.,” recalls the publicist, translator, journalist, member of the RSDLP Lev Deutsch in the article “Priest Georgy Gapon” from the book “Provocateurs and Terror” (Tula, 1926). – All the others around him, not excluding members of various socialist parties, were only his obedient tools. <...> His speech … was neither smooth nor figurative. Therefore, it seemed even strange how he could make a strong impression at large meetings. As if guessing my bewilderment, he once said: “You don’t look at how I speak in private conversation. They would listen when I speak to the masses. I can greatly exalt the people and lead them wherever I want: they understand me better than any party member, and therefore believe and love me. In response to my remark, I remember, that whether the fact that he was in priestly vestments did not play a big role in his influence on the masses, Gapon energetically protested: he did not attach importance to his rank, at least in words, but asserted, that the strength of his influence lies in the fact that he himself comes from a peasant family, and therefore knows perfectly well all the needs, habits and character of the working people, moreover, he is supposedly inherent in the ability to subordinate others to himself. <...> In assessing his talent to influence others, he seems to have fallen into exaggeration. At least abroad, Gapon showed neither willpower nor the ability to captivate or subjugate others. <...> Despite the end of the theological academy, he gave the impression of a man of little intelligence.

Others, including Boris Savinkov, argued that Gapon had “a great, natural, eye-catching oratorical talent.”

In 1905, Gapon illegally returned to Russia with the intention of restoring 11 departments of the closed “Assembly of Russian Factory Workers.” On March 26, 1906, he presented to the workers a draft of a new organization program he had drawn up, called the “Program of Russian Syndicalism” and providing for the creation of a single workers’ union, independent of the government and political parties.

On March 28, Georgy Gapon left St. Petersburg on the Finnish Railway and did not return. Gapon did not take any belongings or weapons with him and promised to return by evening, saying that he was going out of town, to Ozerki, to meet with a representative of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. According to one of the workers, before leaving, Gapon was, as always, cheerful and cheerful …

Meanwhile, rumors had long circulated that an assassination attempt was being prepared on Gapon. Shortly before this, a message was received that the decision to kill Gapon had been made in one Black Hundred circle. The workers warned Gapon about the danger, but he was not afraid. There were also reports that the revolutionary parties were dissatisfied with Gapon. Like, the revolutionaries could not forgive Gapon for an alliance with Count Witte and were afraid that, communicating with government officials, he would divulge their secrets. Gapon himself believed that the revolutionaries did not need to kill him.

On April 6, newspapers reported that Georgy Gapon was missing. On April 16, the Novoe Vremya newspaper under the pseudonym “Mask” published an article “Towards the murder of Fr. Gapon. It reported that Gapon was killed near St. Petersburg by a member of the combat organization of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, engineer Peter Rutenberg, nicknamed Martyn. According to the author, recently Gapon met several times with Rutenberg, who wished to go over to the side of the government and provide him with information about the activities of the military organization. Gapon promised to talk about it with one of the officials of the Police Department. In mid-March, Gapon came to this person and said that Rutenberg agreed to become a police agent, but demanded 100 thousand rubles for his “treason” to the party. The amount turned out to be too large, and Gapon was authorized to offer Rutenberg 25,000. The decisive meeting was to take place in the vicinity of St. Petersburg, and then Martyn decided to put an end to Gapon. The article suggested that the murder took place in Ozerki. Subsequently, it became known that the “Mask” was an official for special assignments at the Police Department, I.F. Manasevich-Manuilov.

On April 26, the official statement of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party appeared in the newspapers about its complete non-involvement in this matter. It said that “new time” messages are vile slander.

Earlier, on April 19, the newspapers received an anonymous letter, which stated that Gapon was killed by the verdict of the “workers’ court”, put to death as a “traitor-provocateur”. Gapon was accused of dealing with government officials and heads of the Police Department.

As follows from the documents of the Police Department, the St. Petersburg security department was aware of the fact of Gapon’s murder already on April 15, even before the appearance of newspaper articles. In the report of the head of the security department A. V. Gerasimov dated April 15, it was reported that Gapon, “suspected by the revolutionaries of betrayal, was strangled on March 28 at a dacha in the vicinity of St. Petersburg by a member of the “military organization” Rutenberg with the assistance of several workers.” On April 16, as mentioned above, an official of the Police Department, I.F. Gapon”, which reproduced information from the secret police.

However, a criminal case on the fact of Gapon’s murder was not initiated until the discovery of his body on April 30. We found Gapon by accident. In March, the dacha was rented by unknown people, who locked it up, left and did not appear again. Suspecting something was wrong, the owner of the dacha, Zverzhinskaya, turned to a local non-commissioned officer. The lock was broken open and in a room on the top floor they found a hanged man who, by all signs, resembled the disappeared Gapon.

On May 1, the judicial authorities arrived at the dacha and, in the presence of attesting witnesses, began questioning the witnesses. They confirmed that the dead man was Georgy Gapon.

The funeral of Gapon at the suburban Assumption cemetery took place on May 3. They were arranged at the expense of workers’ organizations. They gathered about 200 people. After the funeral, a rally was held, the workers sang the anthem “You fell a victim in the fatal struggle”, they said that Gapon fell from the villainous hand, slandered, demanded revenge on the murderers. None of the Gapon workers believed in his betrayal. The belief prevailed that the tsarist secret police was behind the murder of Gapon. Later, a monument with a cross was erected on Gapon’s grave, with the inscription: “Sleep in peace, killed, deceived by treacherous friends. Years will pass, the people will understand you, appreciate you, and your eternal glory will be. The grave was not preserved, between 1924 and 1940. it was dismantled for household needs.

At first, the newspapers printed loud statements that the Gapon case was close to being solved, that the investigation had already hit the trail of the killers and that a high-profile trial would soon take place, but even now this murder is among the unsolved. None of the killers were arrested or brought to justice. The investigation into the criminal case did not lead to any results and was closed after a few years. The materials of the case remained unpublished.

In 1909, Pyotr Rutenberg, who appeared in the case as the main suspect and fled abroad after the murder, published a statement in which he admitted that he had killed Gapon on behalf of the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. According to Rutenberg, the initiator and main organizer of Gapon’s murder was the head of the Socialist-Revolutionary militant organization, a secret officer of the Police Department Yevgeny Azef. Rutenberg’s statement was officially confirmed by the Central Committee of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the Judicial Investigation Commission of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party in the case of Azef. In Soviet historiography, two versions were in circulation: Gapon “was killed by the Socialist-Revolutionaries” and that he was “tried by a group of workers.”

Immediately after the death of Gapon, there were rumors that the security department was involved in his murder. A number of newspaper articles reported that, shortly before his death, Gapon threatened to make loud revelations of persons holding high government positions. In the summer of 1906, Gapon’s former lawyer S.P. Margolin went on vacation abroad. A number of newspapers reported that he wanted to publish abroad the documents given to him by Gapon for safekeeping. And now, staying in some German hotel, Margolin suddenly dies either from an attack of a chronic illness, or from an attack of stomach pains. The mysterious documents of Gapon disappeared without a trace, no one else saw them …

As for Pyotr Rutenberg, the Gapon story broke him morally. He could not recover for a long time from the shock experienced at the time of the murder. In a conversation with Savinkov, he said: “I see him in a dream … He keeps imagining me. Think about it – I saved him on January 9 … And now he is hanging! Rutenberg tried not to remember his participation in the Gapon case and did not like being reminded of it. When in Soviet Russia they decided to republish his book about the murder of Gapon, he actively protested, the book was published without his consent. At the end of his life, Peter Rutenberg admitted in a private conversation: “I’m still not sure whether Gapon’s murder was just, whether he was in fact an agent provocateur.”

Sergei Ishkov.

Photo from the site https://ru.wikipedia.org/