Petersburg's First Mass Labor Organization: The Assembly of Russian Workers and

Father Gapon Part I

Author(s): Gerald D. Surh
Source: The Russian Review , Jul., 1981, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Jul., 1981), pp. 241-262+IV
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Editors and Board of Trustees of the Russian
Review

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 Petersburg's First Mass Labor
Organization: The Assembly of
Russian Workers and Father Gapon
Part I

By GERALD D. SURH

Father Georgii Gapon, the priest who led an icon-bearing procession

of workers to petition the Tsar on "Bloody Sunday," is one of the most
familiar figures of the 1905 Revolution. His enigmatic character and
phenomenal popularity among workers have baffled and fascinated con-
temporaries and historians, while his police connections and the mas-
sacre of his petitioners by Tsarist troops have resulted in a long-standing
characterization of him as a government provocateur. Absorption in his
personality and activities has often diverted attention from the fact that
Gapon headed the first mass workers' organization in Petersburg and
that Bloody Sunday was a labor demonstration.
Most of the existing literature on Gapon and the Assembly has fo-
cussed on the intentions of the worker priest in the events leading to
the petition demonstration of 9 January 1905, or Bloody Sunday. The
account usually conveyed in Soviet textbooks and political pamphlets
has stressed Gapon's police and government connections.1 As a result of
work done during the 1920s and more recently, however, a more com-
plex and convincing view has emerged. It is most fully developed and
documented in Walter Sablinsky's biography of Gapon, The Road to
Bloody Sunday.2 Sablinsky demonstrates that the priest was not only
and not primarily a police agent, but an idealistic partisan of indepen-
dent labor organizing, genuinely interested in the welfare and self-
1 See, for instance: Ocherki istorii SSSR. Pervaia russkaia burzhuazno-demokrat-
icheskaia revoliutsiia 1905-1907 gg., ed. A. M. Pankratova and G. D. Kostomarov
(Moscow, 1955); or S. N. Semanov, Krovavoe voskresen'e (Leningrad, 1965).
2 The Road to Bloody Sunday: Father Gapon and the St. Petersburg Massacre of
1905 (Princeton, 1976). Reference will also be made here to Sablinsky's disserta-
tion, which is lengthier and more detailed than the monograph: "The Road to
Bloody Sunday: Father Gapon, His Labor Organization, and the Massacre of Bloody
Sunday" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1968).

241

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 242 The Russian Review

development of workers. Gapon used the trust invested in him by the

authorities to sponsor a legal labor organization which he prepared,
long before Bloody Sunday, to act independently of the government
and even against it. Sablinsky shows that Gapon had to a degree even
anticipated the stormy events immediately preceding Bloody Sunday
by forming an organization primarily loyal to himself and capable of
responding rapidly in its own interest.3
The story of the Assembly cannot, of course, be separated from that
of its leading figure. Yet Gapon was as much the creation of the Peters-
burg labor movement as he was its leader and organizer, and the As-
sembly belongs as much to the history of labor as it does to the history
of double agents. The existing literature on Gapon, whatever its point
of view, has dealt with the social roots of his activity only in passing.
Preoccupation with Gapon's character and intentions has kept the na-
ture and dynamics of the Assembly's membership in the shadows, and
its role in shaping and qualifying Gapon's actions has not been clearly
established.4 So closely were popular participation and the contribution
of Gapon's most intimate associates related to the priest's own develop-
ment, however, that they cannot be properly understood without re-
capitulating the entire story up to the eve of 9 January. Such is the in-
tention and scope of the present article.

The Farmation of the Assembly

The Assembly (Sobranie russkikh fabrichno-zavodskikh rabochikh g.
Peterburga) was the last important variant of a series of labor organiza-
tions intiated by the tsarist police official, Sergei V. Zubatov, in an at-
tempt to disarm the appeal of the revolutionary parties by satisfying
workers' economic and cultural needs while encouraging their more
conservative political inclinations. As such, the Assembly shared fea-
3 This view was prefigured in less explicit terms in two of the more significant
works of the 1920s: S. Ainzaft, Zubatovshchina i Gaponovshchina, 4th ed. (Moscow,
1925) and in A. A. Shilov's extensive notes to his edition of Gapon's memoirs,
Istoriia moei zhizni (Leningrad, 1925). See also the well-balanced article of Liubov'
Gurevich, "Narodnoe dvizhenie v Peterburge 9-go ianvaria 1905 g." Byloe, 1906,
no. 1, pp. 195-223, based on interviews with participants and later issued as a
small book with extensive notes encompassing much of the monographic and
memoir material published in the 1920s: Deviatoe ianvaria (Khar'kov, 1926); and
the penetrating interpretive essay of A. E. Presniakov, devoted principally to Gapon
and the Assembly: "1905 god," Byloe, 1925, no. 4 (32), pp. 3-35.
4 Sablinsky's interpretation gives Gapon's ideas and initiative overweening im-
portance and assigns his closest collaborators a clearly subordinate role. U. A.
Shuster, Peterburgskie rabochie v 1905-1907 gg. (Leningrad, 1976), whose chapter
on Gapon (pp. 59-95) is the most complex and objective recent Soviet account,
takes the opposite ground: he has minimized discussion of Gapon's motives to such
a point that the priest appears as a mere pawn of events and of his radical assistants.
and describing the nature of their interdependence in what was for both a new and
daring experiment. This has necessitated retelling the entire story of the Assembly,
up to the eve of Bloody Sunday.

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 Petersburg's First Mass Labor Organization 243

tures with similar organizations in Moscow, Minsk, Vilna, and Odessa.

They were all aimed at factory workers and all attracted large follow-
ings within a short time; they all included former revolutionary workers
and/or intellectuals in their organizing nuclei; they were all short-lived;
and, except in Minsk, they were all closed or severely restricted by the
government once they involved themselves in industrial strikes on the
side of the workers.
On several successive occasions the police unions were taken over by
the tumultuous activity of a new proletariat struggling for recognition
and better conditions, and Zubatovists ended by providing the organ-
ization and leadership for massive strike waves. While leading the work-
ers away from the influence of the revolutionaries, they were drawn by
the workers into their labor struggles, technically "economist" and
limited in aims, but by their scale, aggressiveness, and social repercus-
sions, far more threatening and extremist than anything yet organized
by hardened revolutionaries. When Zubatovists became involved in
strikes at the Gujon and other Moscow plants in spring 1902, official
confidence in Zubatov's ideas began to fade; when his agents supported
and led the Odessa general strike of summer 1903, he fell from favor
and lost his position. Politically undeveloped workers, who believed the
government would help them against their employers, had created
more stir and disorder than the government had bargained for; their
actions, "economist" and trade unionist though they were, decisively
discredited Zubatov's experiment and ruined government hopes that
labor unrest might be contained easily.5
Georgii Gapon, a former seminary student and priest in one of Peters-
burg's working-class quarters, fell heir to the legacy of Zubatovism. In
the end, he thoroughly subverted the movement by turning a govern-
ment union against the government and the established order. In late
1902 or early 1903 he began visiting a Zubatovist organization initiated
in the capital, the St. Petersburg Mutual Aid Society of Workers in
Machine Industries. The organization was an attempt to transplant to
Petersburg some of the experience and methods learned in Moscow.
The Society never became popular among Petersburg workers, how-
ever, and closed within a year.6 Gapon attributed this to the organiza-
tion's close ties with the police and the fear and disapproval this aroused
5 On the Zubatov movement see the informative study by Jeremiah Schneiderman,
Sergei Zubatov and Revolutionary Marxism: The Struggle for the Working Class in
Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, N.Y., 1976). Here too, reference will also be made to the
dissertation version of the work, "The Tsarist Government and the Labor Move-
ment, 1898-1903: the Zubatovshchina" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley, 1966).
6 V. V. Sviatlovskii, Professional'noe dvizhenie v Rossii (St. Petersburg, 1907),
pp. 68-70. N. M. Varnashev, "Ot nachala do kontsa s gaponovskoi organizatsiei
(Vospominaniia)," Istoriko-revoliutsionnyi sbornik, ed. V. I. Nevskii, vol. 1 (Lenin-
grad, 1924), pp. 179-89. Schneiderman, Sergei Zubatov, pp. 173-81.

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 244 The Russian Review

among workers. He and a group of like-minded worker leaders began

to plan another organization which would avoid this pitfall by down-
playing police supervision and involving its members more intimately
in its functioning. As a protege of Zubatov, Gapon was able to secure
permission to put his ideas into effect, and the first meeting of the St.
Petersburg Assembly of Russian Factory and Mill Workers was held in
August 1903.
This group was only an organizing nucleus with no official standing,
and Gapon's first task was to justify its existence to the government,
which had already seen two other such experiments end in disaster. In
a memorandum written in October 1903, he criticized previous Zubatov-
ist organizations for making use of police, paid agents, and non-Russians
to lead Russian workers, and he outlined a plan for the new organiza-
tion which would avoid undue police supervision and make use in-
stead of self-supporting workers, especially more "consciously devel-
oped persons, who are dedicated to the [Zubatovist] idea, and under-
stand it."7 In this way, he implicitly promised to turn in a better per-
formance if his organization were allowed greater autonomy from police
supervision. In one stroke, therefore, he offered an alternative to the
somewhat discredited earlier experiments and justified a plan that would
give him and his worker colleagues greater freedom of action.
Like the Moscow Mutual Aid Society of Machine Workers, the As-
sembly organized a program of concerts and lectures as well as cooper-
ative and self-improvement projects. Unlike the Moscow organization,
however, the Petersburg Assembly did not seek to impress workers by
intervening in labor disputes on their behalf. Gapon did intervene in-
formally on behalf of individual workers in trouble with their employ-
ers, using his influence as a priest and semiofficial trustee of the govern-
ment to help settle particular problems. Although 1904 witnessed rela-
tively few strikes in St. Petersburg, previous Zubatovist organizations
had had a way of catalyzing strike activity, and the Assembly's nonin-
volvement was undoubtedly the result of a conscious decision to desist
from it. Prior to the Putilov Plant strike of January 1905, which immedi-
ately preceded the January strike wave and the procession to the Winter
Palace, the Assembly was to most participants and observers simply a
self-help and self-improvement society. During most of its existence
the Assembly was less an incipient labor union, and less interested in
becoming one, than the earlier Zubatovist organizations had been.8

7 R. Kobiakov, "Capon i okhrannoe otdelenie do 1905 goda," Byloe, 1925, no. 1

(29), pp. 33-45.
8 Father George Gapon, The Story of My Life (London, 1906), pp. 118-19.
Gapon's memoirs were first published in the Strand Magazine 30, nos. 175-79

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 Petersburg's First Mass Labor Organization 245

Gapon had bigger plans in mind. He wanted the Assembly to grow

into a gigantic organization with branches in other cities and to become
a genuine force in Russian society. He knew that premature involve-
ment in industrial conflict would hinder that aim and seems to have
resolved to proceed cautiously and quietly for the time being.
The chief problem in doing this was controlling his worker assistants,
whose very sincerity and earnestness might lead them to intervene in
protests and factory disputes and so embroil the Assembly with the
authorities before it was strong enough to account for itself. According-
ly, Gapon began with a rather conservative group, many of them rem-
nants of the first Zubatovist organization in Petersburg, including its
monarchist founders, M. A. Ushakov and V. I. Pikunov. The group was
later described as consisting of family men, over thirty years old, who
were "comparatively well-off materially." "None of them had any spe-
cial fondness for politics and were proponents of a peaceful trade union
movement." That is to say, they did not think workers had to fight for
political rights in order to attain even trade-unionist goals, but trusted
in the "benevolent attitude of the authorities toward labor."9
The feature that most of these men shared was a certain naive trust
in Gapon. It has often been assumed that the bulk of Gapon's followers,
ill-educated and steeped in peasant superstition, responded to his priest-
ly bearing and the promise from the other world of help with the mis-
eries of this one. Such an explanation overlooks the specific needs and
characteristics of his closest associates, who came from that stratum of
skilled workers, predominantly in the metal and machine trades, which
produced most of the natural worker leaders of all political stripes. As
noted earlier, these workers were better paid, better educated, and

(July-November 1905). They were immediately translated into French and Rus-
sian. See the scholarly edition of 1925 mentioned in note 3.
The only claim that the Assembly did involve itself in strikes came after 9 Jan-
uary from Chief Factory Inspector S. P. Chizhov. The accusation is highly question-
able, judging by internal evidence, and in any case refers to only two strikes in
December 1904, when events leading to the Putilov Plant strike were already in
train, and the possibility of a strike was being discussed in the Assembly. Chizhov's
Memorandum of 28 January 1905, is in Krasnaia letopis', 1925, no. 2 (13), p. 46;
and his report to the Finance Minister of 5 April 1905, is in Nachalo Pervoi Russkoi
Revoliutsii. Ianvar'-mart 1905 goda (Moscow, 1955), a volume in the series Rev-
oliutsiia 1905-1907 gg. v Rossii. Dokumenty i Materialy, ed. A. M. Pankratova, p.
221. Hereafter, these two works will be cited as KL and NPRR, respectively.
9Varnashev, "Vospominaniia," pp. 190, 193-94. Solomon Schwarz has cited
this same passage in characterizing the entire worker leadership of the Assembly
throughout the entire period of its existence. In so doing, he overlooked later de-
velopments, ignored the fact that Varnashev was referring to the earliest period
only, and distorted the whole character of the Assembly's leadership. The Russian
Revolution of 1905: The Workers' Movement and the Formation of Bolshevism and
Menshevism (Chicago, 1967), p. 282.

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 246 The Russian Review

therefore better read than other workers, and partly for that reason
often commanded the allegiance of workers less well off. Older, more
sober, and more public-spirited though Gapon's associates may have
been, they were for the most part political neophytes. The reasons for
this, of course, are not obscure. One hardly need mention that the po-
litical development of all the tsar's workers had less money and leisure
than most to take advantage of the limited amount of political freedom
and information that was permitted; or that the trade union movement,
which involved and educated politically the workers of other coun-
tries, was nonexistent in Russia before 1905. Some of Gapon's assistants,
like Ushakov and Pikunov, were confirmed monarchists and conserv-
atives, while others were or had been members of revolutionary parties.
But these constituted a small minority.
Even in St. Petersburg, whose proletariat was later to acquire a rep-
utation for being the most advanced in Russia, it was possible to find
men like the machinist Nikolai Varashev, who had worked in Peters-
burg factories for sixteen years, was highly literate, having read most of
the Russian classics, yet who knew nothing about labor problems or
politics.

In 1906 every little boy declined the names of the parties with no difficulty
[but] I well recall a time in 1902 when I myself asked that words like
"esdek" [SD] and "eser" [SR] and others be deciphered for me.

He recalls never having seen or even heard of party leaflets, let alone
the parties themselves or their ideas, even though he worked in some of
the city's larger plants, where political intrigues and propaganda were
more frequently encountered.l0 Men like Varnashev, valued for their
skills, better educated and more highly paid, felt themselves to one
degree or another different from and superior to ordinary workers. After
learning something about the Zubatovist Mutual Aid Society of Machine
Workers and deciding to join, Vamashev regretted he had not heard
earlier "of these energetic and intelligent innovators, who ennobled the
title of 'worker' [rabochii], which sometimes jarred me and [which] I
disguised with the more pleasant-sounding word-'mechanic' [mekhan-
ik]."'l This remarkable admission reveals how Zubatovists, almost uni-
versally vilified by revolutionaries as traitors to the labor movement,
were viewed by naive but well-intentioned workers. More important
still, it shows how even the government unions, whatever their political
intentions, could call into question subjective status distinctions among
workers, stressing their common fate. Varnashev took an active part in
10 Varnashev, "Vospominaniia," pp. 177-178.
11 Ibid., p. 180.

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 Petersburg's First Mass Labor Organization 247

both the Mutual Aid Society and the Assembly, becoming one of
Gapon's most trusted and important assistants.
Those other educated workers and would-be leaders who, like
Varnashev, gravitated to the Assembly found in Gapon not so much an
object of faith as an admirable complement to their own views and
aspirations. He was genuinely sympathetic to workers of the lowest
cultural level and circumstances, and sincerely dedicated to organizing
the means of meeting their needs. His assistants understood the need to
organize workers to help themselves but often did not have very much
faith in the ability of ordinary workers to accomplish it.2 As a clergy-
man he was able to speak to representatives of higher spheres and the
intelligentsia on an equal footing, lending to the workers' cause the
dignity and sanctity of his priest's robes. At the same time, he could
talk to workers not only in their own language, but also without con-
veying the feeling that he was speaking down to them, and this ability
surely made him the envy of most party intellectuals. In addition,
Gapon possessed a certain richness of feeling and expression which lent
conviction to his pronouncements and inspired trust (even when ade-
quate grounds for it did not exist).
This bond of trust, always so important to the unity and cohesion of
the Assembly, was probably cemented for most of Gapon's followers by
his own political inexperience and naivete. Although he had read a
great deal of revolutionary literature and had been exposed to Zubatov's
ideas, he still preserved a traditional, moderate outlook that included
faith in the established order and its potential for peaceful improve-
ment. He became more radical in the course of 1904, but he never really
overcame his distrust of both the government and the Left, and he re-
mained a man whose basic interest was in the moral and material up-
lift of society's victims. To the depth of his being, therefore, he repre-
sented the ambivalences characteristic of many Russian workers at the
moment of their political awakening. Gapon's vision did not really tran-
scend that moment, and when it passed he was left beached and
stranded; but while it lasted, he was the leader of the hour, seemingly
possessed of superhuman powers.
Most of the small number of influential worker leaders who were
members or ex-members of revolutionary parties avoided Gapon's or-
ganization because the parties viewed it as a rival to their own activities
aimed at subverting the labor movement. Gapon realized this boycott
12 For instance, when Varnashev talked to his friend Nikolai Stepanov about the
Mutual Aid Society, the latter said he "did not believe that workers could produce
anything sensible." Characteristically, Varnashev was able to persuade him by the
force of his own example, and Stepanov later became an officer of one of the
Assembly's branches. See Vamashev, "Vospominaniia," pp. 178-80.

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 248 The Russian Review

of the Assembly would prove an obstacle to recruiting members, es-

pecially among better-educated and more radical workers, who were
more inclined to share the revolutionaries' assessment of Zubatovism or
were more sensitive to the opinions of informed persons. But even
among the less educated rank-and-file workers of the city there was a
greater inclination than among workers of most other industrial areas
to view the interests of labor separately from that of the government
and the established order generally. On two occasions in the previous
decade Petersburg workers from several districts of the city had organ-
ized massive strikes and had undergone government repression in pro-
portion to the great surprise and alarm they had inspired in official
quarters. The strikes of 1901 were even in part inspired and led by
revolutionary workers, and this link with the revolutionary parties had
been embodied in the strikers' demands.13 Although the influence of
revolutionaries among workers was as yet unaffected by their ideas, the
capital of the Russian Empire was already becoming the capital of
revolution, and its workers were on the whole more critical and disaf-
fected than those of Moscow, Odessa, and most other areas.
Gapon was aware that in this milieu he needed the help of leaders
with some experience in labor politics and organizing if the Assembly
were to become the mass organization that he envisioned. Gapon there-
fore cultivated the interest of a group of independent Social Democrats
which, weary of the party's impotence, secrecy, and domination by in-
tellectuals, looked to the Assembly as a means of reaching large num-
bers of hitherto unpoliticized workers.14 This group cautiously held
aloof during the early months of the Assembly's existence while Gapon
was occupied with drafting the Assembly's Statutes and establishing
his credibility with the authorities. By the end of 1903 he felt confident
enough to expel from the Assembly the only serious rivals and threats
13 On the strikes of 1896-97 and 1901 see: T.I.Sh., "K istorii peterburgskoi stachki
tekstil'shchikov v 1896 g., KL, 1931, no. 2 (41), pp. 94-107; K. M. Takhtarev,
Rabochee dvizhenie v Peterburge (1893-1901 gg.) (Leningrad, 1924); Allan K.
Wildman, The Making of a Workers' Revolution: Russian Social Democracy, 1881-
1903 (Chicago, 1968); N. V. Iukhneva, "Nakanune Obukhovskoi oborony (Pervo-
maiskaia stachka v Peterburge v 1901 godu)," Vestnik Leningradskogo universiteta
14, no. 2 (1961): 57-67; Iukheva, "Iz istorii stachechnogo dvizheniia peter-
burgskikh rabochikh posle Obukhovskoi oborony (Stachka rabochikh Nevskoi
zastavy v mae 1901 goda)," Uchenye zapiski LGU. Seriia istoricheskikh nauk 32
(1959): 201-16; M. Rozanov, "'Obukhovskaia oborona' (Iz istorii Obukhovskogo
zavoda-1901 g.)," Istoriia proletariata SSSR, 1935, no. 2 (22), pp. 68-112; and
Gerald Surh, "Petersburg Workers in 1905: Strikes, Workplace Democracy, and
the Revolution" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1979), ch. 2.
14 A. E. Karelin, "Deviatoe ianvaria i Gapon. Vospominaniia," KL, 1922, no. 1,
pp. 106-107. Karelin, Petrogradskaia pravda, 22 January 1922, p. 2. Sviatlovskii,
Professional'noe dvizhenie, pp. 89-90. Ivan Pavlov, "Iz vospominanii o 'Rabochem
soiuze' i sviashchennike Gapone," Minuvshie gody, 1908, nos. 3-4, pp. 25-28.

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 Petersburg's First Mass Labor Organization 249

to his leadership at that point, the orthodox Zubatovists Ushakov and

Pikunov. Gapon had begun to shape a group of worker-assistants whose
primary dependence and loyalty would be to him. By eliminating the
monarchists he also reassured the leftists and paved the way for their
full and active participation in the Assembly.15
By mid-February 1904 Gapon had achieved the major aim of his early
efforts, official recognition and sanction by the Interior Ministry. The
Ministry, by approving the Assembly's Statutes, "granted for the first
time in Russia the possibility of real association without any administra-
tive interference.""'6 The statutes Gapon drafted, despite their recog-
nition of the need to respect the government's ultimate authority, did
embody his ideas on organizational autonomy and worker indepen-
dence and therefore differed significantly from the statutes of earlier
Zubatovist organizations.17 This can be best understood by comparing
Gapon's statutes with those of the Moscow Zubatovist union.
For purposes of discussion three interrelated aspects of the statutes
may be distinguished: the nature of the supervisory agent; the extent of
direct government intervention; and the organization's internal struc-
ture of authority and participation.
The supervising agent provided for in Moscow had been a council
of worker-organizers, handpicked by Zubatov from worker activists,
mostly former Social Democrats who had been arrested for their poli-
tical activities, who who had repented and accepted Zubatov's views.
They were full-time organizers, responsible to and paid by the Okhrana
and personally trusted by Zubatov. The council could dismiss its mem-
bers but could not add new ones without police approval. The organiza-
tion's first statutes consisted of a brief "Instruction" from Moscow Police
Chief Trepov, charging it with overall responsibility for organizing and
controlling the Moscow Society of Machine Workers. Later on, when
this Society had attracted a sizable number of workers and had begun
to take an interest in their on-the-job needs, its members drafted their
own set of statutes in which, together with the supervisory and educa-
tional functions assigned it in the Instruction, it officially assigned itself
the right to intervene in labor disputes (in conjunction with the Moscow
police, to be sure). Still later, when the council had begun to embarrass
the Moscow authorities by its often effective defense of workers' in-

15 Pavlov, "Iz vospominanii," p. 38.

16 M. Grigor'evskii [M.G. Lunts], Politseiskii sotsializm v Rossii (Zubatovshchina)
(St. Petersburg, 1906), p. 39.
17 Sablinsky correctly observes that Gapon's Statutes were "undoubtedly modeled
on the Moscow statutes as amended for use in St. Petersburg." Regrettably, how-
ever, he does not discuss the unique features of the former. "The Road to Bloody
Sunday," p. 218. In the monograph version, see p. 94.

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250 The Russian Review

terests, the government issued a final set of statutes, which increased

direct police supervision of the Society.18
The supervising agent in the Petersburg Statutes was a "Representa-
tive" (Gapon), appointed for three years, and a "Circle of Responsible
Persons," drawn from the general membership and so named because
its members bore financial responsibility for the Assembly. The Peters-
burg arrangement gave the appearance of tighter control in that the
Representative was the "chief director and administrator of all Assem-
bly activity," determining the agenda of the Governing Board (of offi-
cers elected from and by members of the Responsible Circle) and serv-
ing as chief intermediary between the Assembly and all other agencies,
private and governmental. In reality, everything depended on the per-
sonality of the Representative and the governments trust in him. This
arrangement admirably suited the requirements of both Gapon and the
police. The government, wary of repeating the fiascoes of the Moscow
and Odessa Zubatovshchiny, was reassured by an arrangement that
seemed to leave less initiative in the hands of worker leaders and placed
its trust instead in a figure it took to be a trained agent, whose priestly
vocation seemed but a further guarantee of his loyalty and trustworthi-
ness. Gapon, who had promised his adherents a more autonomous or-
ganization, and whose own plans for expansion required the absence of
close police supervision, wrote the Statutes in such a way that he him-
self would be in the position to insure the Assembly's autonomy. Be-
cause the government's supervisory policy toward the Assembly relied
primarily on trust of the Representative, the selection of worker leaders
was permitted to be an internal function of the organization. The Re-
sponsible Circle was to be chosen at the discretion of the Representa-
tive and the Circle itself. Only members of the "Govering Board,"
elected from the Responsible Circle, were subject to government re-
view, and this did not prevent Gapon from placing "his men" in almost
any position he wished.l9
The relative independence of the Assembly was further reflected in
the degree of government interference envisaged. According to the In-

18 Texts of these statutes are available, respectively, in Katorga i ssylka 14 (1925):

113-114; Byloe 14:89-91; and Grigor'evskii, Politseiskii sotsializm, pp. 20-23. All
three (although summarized) are translated and reprinted in Dmitry Pospielovsky,
Russian Police Trade-Unionism: Experiment or Provocation? (London, 1971), pp.
165-69. See also Schneiderman, Sergei Zubatov, pp. 115, 144-45, 169, 182.
19 A translation of the complete text of the Assembly's Statutes appears in
Sablinsky, Road to Bloody Sunday, pp. 323-43 (the monograph). A complete text
of the original is available only in archives (ibid., pp. 400-401), but selections
appear in A. Kats and Iu. Milonov, 1905 god. Professional'noe dvizhenie (Moscow,
1926), pp. 90-95. Cited hereafter as Assembly Statutes.

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 Petersburg's First Mass Labor Organization 251

struction of 1901, the leaders of the Moscow Society of Machine Work-

ers were to work directly under the supervision of the Okhrana. They
used typewriters and duplication equipment at Okhrana Headquarters,
and were provided there with the "advice and the necessary permission
for the conduct of their meeting; some Council members were even
paid salaries by the police."20 The statutes later issued by the police
provided additionally for selection of the Society's officers by the Chief
of the Moscow Police from a list of candidates chosen by the Society's
members; the right of the police chief to order an inspection of the So-
ciety's funds and activities at any time; the right of the police chief to
send police officers to any general meeting of the Society; the right of
the police chief to impose topics of discussion at general meetings, his
voice carrying the weight of twenty ordinary members; and finally, the
right to close the Society at any time at his own discretion.2'
The Assembly, by contrast, was not subject to the same degree of
direct supervision. Of course, the government did maintain final author-
ity over the organization, but its supervision was more remote. Approval
of the Statutes came from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and it alone
was charged with the right to close the Assembly permanently, although
the St. Petersburg City Governor was permitted to close individual
meetings if they were 'harmful to the state order and public security
and morality." The police are mentioned only once, in connection with
their required presence at lectures dealing with labor problems. In all
other cases, the responsible government figure mentioned in the Sta-
tutes is the City Governor. He exercised veto power over choices made
to the Governing Board; he approved the choice of a Representative by
the Responsible Circle; and he reviewed all decisions made by general
meetings delegating action to Assembly officers, although he relied on
the Representative to communicate this information to him.22
By making the Representative directly responsible to the City Gov-
ernor rather than to the same agency which was charged with political
surveillance and maintenance of order, a further buffer to undue and
overly close police interference was provided. Even zealous policemen
were likely to think twice before meddling with an organization that
had direct access to the City Governor. Gapon, for his part, befriended
and flattered the new City Governor, I. A. Fullon, an incompetent but
good-natured old soldier, who came to see himself as a special friend
and protector of the Assembly. He consistently reassured the Interior
Ministry that the Assembly was operating according to its Statutes and
2o Schneiderman, "'ubatovshchina," p. 212. Sergei Zubatov, p. 118.
21 Pospielovsky, Russian Police Trade-Unionism, pp. 168-69.
22 Assembly Statutes, articles 2, 16, 37, 53, 62.

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252 The Russian Review

keeping clear of socialist ideas (even when it was not), and Gapon en-
joyed his trust right up to the eve of 9 January.23
This relatively mild supervisory policy can be understood only after
examining the third aspect of the statutes mentioned above, the internal
structure and functioning of the Assembly. Unlike the Moscow groups,
the Petersburg Assembly laid down criteria and conditions for member-
ship and established standards for its autonomous self-administration.
Active members were to be factory workers of either sex and of the
Christian faith; they could not be office workers or foremen, minors,
persons under court sentence to limitation of rights or on trial for crimes
entailing such a sentence. Members of the Responsible Circle were to
be serious and honest men and woman factory workers of Russian ori-
gins and of the Christian faith who agreed to share financial responsi-
bility for expenses incurred in renting the premises of the Assembly.
Together with the Representative, these persons constituted "the circle
of persons responsible to the Government for the sober and lawful
supervision of the Assembly's activities."24 The responsibilities of this
circle were thus defined to be moral as well as financial. A set of officers
was established and their administrative duties defined. Officers and
Responsible Circle members were called upon to serve, at least for the
first year, "selflessly and without pay." The Assembly was to police itself
to insure against gambling and drinking on the premises, to prevent
illicit discussions in and around the Assembly's meeting place, and to
provide for cleanliness, health, and financial reliability in the Assem-
bly's activities.
The Assembly Statutes thus created an organization with a spirit of
self-responsibility and self-rule, even while providing for Gapon's over-
arching supervision and for the ultimate authority of the government.
They trimmed direct police interference to a minimum and left most
of the day-to-day administration to the elected officers and responsible
persons of the organization. The workers' trust in the Representative
and in his assistants thus might prevail over their distrust of the police
and their suspicion that the Assembly was a device to trap and identify
"unreliable elements." The Statutes also reassured government and po-
lice officials by providing a theory and justification for granting the
Assembly greater autonomy than had been allowed to earlier Zubatov-
ist organizations. In fact, the Statutes were probably more important in
allaying the suspicion of the authorities than that of the workers. As
long as the Assembly appeared to adhere scrupulously to the Statutes,
23 See Petersburg Police Chief Lopukhin's report of 1 February 1905 to the
Interior Minister in NPRR, p. 99.
24 Assembly Statutes, articles 12, 14, 17-19.

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 Petersburg's First Mass Labor Organization 253

the government kept its part of the bargain and respected the Assem-
bly's autonomy. The longer this took place and the public order was not
disturbed (and 1904 witnessed comparatively few labor disputes), the
more the authorities were lulled into a false sense of security since not
only were the Statutes' tenets being observed, but the theory behind
them-that, left to themselves, the Gaponists could make a better job
of it-was being proven correct. Hence, the longer an orderly situation
prevailed, the more disarmed the police became, the less likely they
were to institute closer surveillance of the Assembly and the more like-
ly to discount chance rumors and reports of Assembly infractions that
inevitably came their way. The Assembly's careful observance of the
provisions for its own financial responsibility and independence, for
the exclusion of drinking, fighting, and gambling, and for the mainten-
ance of a businesslike and nonpolitical atmosphere at general meetings,
especially during its early months, greatly impressed and reassured the
authorities.25
The Assembly's de facto autonomy made it possible to depart from
the letter and spirit of the Statutes. Gapon organized a Secret Commit-
tee of workers' leaders, including several ex-Social Democrats, which
discussed illegal literature and the political direction of the Assembly;
later, they even carried some of these discussions into meetings of the
Responsible Circle. Through private discussions (specifically forbidden
by the Statutes),26 political ideas were even introduced into general
meetings of the Assembly. Partly in secret, partly in the guise of self-
improvement lectures, Gapon's lieutenants gathered the political and
organizational wherewithal that made it possible later to lead a city-
wide strike on short notice because trained leaders and a partly in-
formed membership were already on hand. The Putilov Plant strike, in
its turn, was able to take the authorities by surprise because it rose and
spread so rapidly. All this was possible because of the relatively loose
leash on which the Assembly operated. It was thus not accident or over-
sight that permitted the Assembly's semi-secret political life to escape
the notice of the police, although embarrassed government officials
might later have claimed it was. It flowed from the carefully preserved
facade originally conceived by Gapon, codified in the Statutes, and
approved by the Interior Ministry. Gapon did not plan or anticipate
this outcome; at the time he was only interested in holding the al-
legiance of the leftists among his close supporters and in preparing the

25 See Okhrana Colonel Kremenetsldi's report on the Assembly in KL, 1922, no.
1, pp. 298-99, quoted and translated in Sablinsky, "Road to Bloody Sunday,"
pp. 276-77; in the monograph version, pp. 109-110.
26 Assembly Statutes, article 45.

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254 The Russian Review

conditions for the Assembly's widespread appeal among workers by re-

moving the police from direct surveillance of its activities.

Father Gapon
As mentioned previously, the vast bulk of the writings about Gapon
and the Assembly has viewed the priest as at bottom a government
agent whose activities were directed against the labor movement and
the cause of the revolution. The character and politics of the Assembly
and its worker leaders, when these things have been considered at all,
have been viewed as derived from Gapon, following his lead and sharing
his illusions.27 The reasons for thinking this was not the case, or not al-
ways, are considerable, but the evidence for it is sketchy and incom-
plete. An examination of Gapon's political views and character may
therefore help to clarify the position of his closest associates as well as
the illusions of his more distant admirers.
The peculiar thing about the rather one-sided condemnation to which
Gapon has been subjected is that it has ignored or discounted the testi-
mony of those who participated in the Assembly's inner circle and
knew him best during this period.28 They knew of his police connec-
tions yet did not regard him as a provocateur. The revolutionaries
among them were keenly aware of the counterrevolutionary potential
of his experiment in police unionism, yet despite strong distrust and
after some hesitation they found the Assembly a suitable arena for their
political activities. They all knew about his political confusion and his
attempt to revive the Assembly in the fall of 1905 with a generous gov-
ernment grant,29 yet when they recounted the events of 1903-1904 they
did not question the sincerity of his intentions toward the workers or
indicate that he betrayed their trust in any way. On the contrary, they
make it clear that without his sympathy and connivance their own po-
litical work among Assembly members would not have been possible.
There is little in Gapon's background that permits a very definite
characterization of his political views and nothing that foretold treach-
ery against the revolutionary movement. If anything, his background
and early sympathies leaned to the moderate left. Although he came
from a traditionally religious Ukrainian peasant family and studied for
27 For instance, Sablinsky and Schwarz each give a different evaluation of Gapon,
yet both regard his closest aides as having made no independent contribution and
having been in fundamental agreement with him. Sablinsky, Road to Bloody Sun-
day, chs. 4 and 5; Schwarz, "Zubatovism and Gaponism," Russian Revolution of
1905, pp. 267-284. For a more adequate account of the relationship, see Shuster,
Peterburgskie rabochie, pp. 64-70.
28 These were principally Karelin, Pavlov, and Vamashev. See also the police
depositions of Inozemtsev, Ianov, and Kladovnikov in KL, 1922, no. 1, pp. 307-25.
29 Sablinsky, Road to Bloody Sunday, pp. 305-17.

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 Petersburg's First Mass Labor Organization 255

the priesthood, he showed doubts about his calling at an early date and
interrupted his schooling to work as a zemstvo statistician for a while.
Plans to attend a university were frustrated by bad conduct marks at,
the seminary. As he explained it, the bad marks were due to his failure
to attend classes and to an adolescent brush with Tolstoian views up-
holding the inner spirit of religion over its outward forms. Although he
did become a priest, he retained some of his youthful rebelliousness and
was from an early date critical of the incompetence, venality, and cor-
ruption of the Orthodox Church and priesthood. These things seemed to
him all the less tolerable in light of the Church's high calling and the
poverty and suffering of ordinary people. He resisted temptations to
feather his own nest by refusing offers to become either a monk or a
professor of theology. His high-minded iconoclasm closed ordinary
channels of advancement to him, but he was often able through his
charm and apparent sincerity to influence important personages to do
his will. He never afterward abandoned his habit of lobbying in higher
circles and later used it to considerable advantage in the cause of labor.
Employing this method, he was able, in 1898, to matriculate in the St.
Petersburg Theological Academy. But he found much to criticize
among his teachers and fellow students, and while still a theology stu-
dent he took work as a priest, choosing parishes that put him in touch
with the lower classes of the capital. In this work he first developed
plans for mutual aid organizations and made contacts with industrial
workers.

I made the acquaintance of many workmen at this time, going among them
at their work on the Baltic wharves and entering into conversations with
them. They got to trust me, and some of them confessed to having become
infected with political ideas. I did not at that time think that political
change was necessary. I told them that by some industrial organization
they might reach better results for their own elevation than by entering
into conflict with the Government.30

Long before contacting Zubatov, therefore, Gapon was familiar with

the problems and feelings of the city's proletariat. The contrast he draws
between political involvement and industrial organization and his as-
sociation of the latter with the ambiguous phrase, "their own elevation,"
were characteristic of his views at the time. As worthwhile as material
improvements were in themselves, the whole effort took on a new
meaning for Gapon when combined with the initiative and activity of
the workers acting on their own behalf; it acquired the force of a moral
imperative. Although he was correct to imply in this passage that his

30 Gapon, Story of My Life, p. 62. Gapon's memoirs, written after Bloody Sun-
day, are the source for most of the biographical information given here.

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256 The Russian Review

views later changed, he never abandoned his simple faith in the in-
trinsic worth of self-organization and self-help. Elsewhere in his mem-
oirs he mentioned his sympathy for revolutionaries, but at no point did
he claim ever to have shared their views.30 On the contrary, he thought
their clandestine methods prevented them from helping workers.
Gapon's first attempts to organize self-help projects foundered on
unfulfilled promises of aid from important personages and on bureau-
cratic indifference. On two occasions he drafted ambitious plans for the
rehabilitation of the "lower depths" of the city-the unemployed, de-
moralized, and semi-criminal elements-and sought to peddle them in
government and high society circles. All he received for his troubles
were polite though insincere expressions of concern and the enmity of
government personages whose interests his projects threatened. In the
end he was denounced to the Okhrana as a revolutionary and in this
manner first came to the attention of Zubatov.32
Toward the end of 1902 Gapon traveled to Moscow to learn first-
hand about the Zubatovist organization, the Society of Machine Work-
ers. By this time, the Moscow movement had passed beyond the hope
and enthusiasm that had greeted its founding and was under closer
police supervision following its intimate involvement in a number of
strikes earlier that year. Gapon spoke with an enthusiastic Zubatovist
leader, Mikhail Afanas'ev, but felt suspicious of him since the ex-
worker lived in a luxurious apartment and even kept a servant. Later he
talked to a journalist and former lecturer for the Society who told him
that the meetings of the organization were used by the secret police
for "fishing out the cleverer and more intelligent men, whom they ar-
rest afterwards. In this way they hope to permanently deprive the
movement of its natural leaders." The journalist said that Afanas'ev
himself had caused the arrest of N. K. Dmitrieva, a Social Democrat
and Sunday-school teacher who had appeared at one of the Society's
earliest meetings.33 Gapon's reaction was swift and harsh:

All this, supported by other information, filled my mind with disgust.

The organizers of the association drew large salaries from the Political
Police, and lived in luxury.... I began to see clearly that the only aim of
the association was to check every healthy growth in the labour movement,
and therefore I decided that to join Zubatoffs work would be not only
immoral, but even criminal.34

Returning to St. Petersburg sadder but wiser, Gapon later claimed to

1a Ibid., pp. 22,85.
82 Ibid., pp. 60-61, 67-78.
33 Ibid., pp. 87-88. Schneiderman, Sergei Zubatov, p. 118.
34 Gapon, Story of My Life, p. 89.

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 Petersburgs First Mass Labor Organization 257
have inwardly dissociated himself from the Zubatov movement but to
have feigned interest for the time being in order not to arouse suspicion.
He visited the newly formed police union in Petersburg, the Mutual-
Aid Society of St. Petersburg Mechanics and even wrote a report on
its functioning for Zubatov. It was during this period, Gapon later
wrote, that

for the first time, there arose in my mind the question whether it might
not be possible, by pretending adherence to Zubatoffs policy, to attain my
own end of a genuine working-class organization....
Gradually there was ripening in my mind a plan for influencing the
Workmen's Association organized by Zubatoff in such a way as to com-
pletely paralyze the efforts of the Political Police to use it as a buttress of
the Autocracy, and to direct it into an altogether different channel. If I had
had any faith in the genuineness of Zubatoffs intentions, it had by this
time absolutely disappeared.

The time referred to was mid-1903. He goes on to explain his plan.

It was clear to me that my countrymen would never be in better con-

ditions of life until they were organized; and it appeared to me-and this
belief has been confirmed by what has since happened-that, whoever
commenced that organization, it would in the end become a genuine
labour movement, because the intelligent members of the working classes
who had been enlisted would ultimately get the upper hand. That is why,
after much anxious thought, I decided that, distasteful as it might be, I
ought to take part in this beginning, and to endeavour, using Zubatoff as
a tool, gradually to get the control of the organization into my own hands.
By affecting to help these servants of the Autocracy I should get complete
freedom in my own relations with the working men, and I should not be
under the perpetual necessity of hiding my movements from police spies.
It was only too evident that the declared Revolutionists would have but
little influence among the masses of the people, because they always had
to work secretly in small circles of selected workmen, the body of the
people remaining untouched. As a priest, on the other hand, I had a great
advantage in coming closer into contact with the people. I believed that,
by first organizing them for mutual help under the protection of the au-
thorities, arranging at the same time secret societies of the best workmen,
picked out for the purpose, whom I could educate and use as missionaries,
I could, little by little, convert the whole organization to larger ends, un-
til, my own men having replaced the officials of the association appointed
by the police, and having won the respect and trust of the general body
by their manifest honesty, I should have a group of assistants ready to
lead the people when the critical moment came.35

This remarkable claim to prescience bears comment and qualifica-

tion. It is clear from the testimony of Gapon's assistants that as early as

35 Ibid., pp. 94, 99, 103-104.

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258 The Russian Review

1903, he did remain aloof from the Zubatovist society in Petersburg

while planning and discussing with them another society that would
be free of the influence of priests (other than Gapon) and the police.36
It is highly doubtful, however, that he intended at that stage to direct
his organization "into an altogether different channel" and to "convert
the whole organization to larger ends... ready to lead the people when
the critical moment came." There is no hint of such ambitions in the
recollections of his assistants, nor is there any other evidence to cor-
roborate such claims. On the contrary, the evidence shows that those
among them with a revolutionary background remained quite distrust-
ful of Gapon throughout this period. Moreover, Gapon's dependence
on government sponsorship and even his personal attachment to Zu-
batov were still too great at this point to be easily reconciled with the
distrust of the government implied here.37 Gapon probably did disap-
prove of the venality and treachery of the Zubatovist movement in
Moscow, and he did want to start another organization which would
be free of these elements and would maintain a greater integrity in its
relations with its members, but it is quite unlikely that he planned from
the beginning to establish the degree of independence he described in
this passage.
During the next year, Gapon did begin to accept the wider aims and
priorities set forth above, but that occurred only after the Assembly had
been established and after he had come under the influence of his more
radical assistants, as will be described below. His claim to have held
far-reaching aims as early as mid-1903 was probably the result of the
tendency of all memoirists to attribute to themselves clearer motives
than they often in fact possessed and of his interest after 9 January in
clearing his name and in stressing the longevity of his honorable inten-
tions toward the labor movement.
In addition to this distortion, however, the passage reveals an im-
portant aspect of Gapon's thought and feeling about the Assembly.
There is a barely concealed ambiguity about who would control the
organization. On the one hand, he claimed to have somehow planned
the transfer of power to worker leaders, or at least not to interfere with
the process of their natural ascendance. On the other hand, he is clearly
the central figure in the planning and execution of the strategy while
the others are his assistants. This egotism is consistent with his tone
throughout the memoirs, where he is viewed as the sole genius and
demiurge of all the action described. Others have attested to his deep
36Vamashev, "Vospominaniia," pp. 188-89. Karelin, "Vospominaniia," p. 106.
37 Sablinsky, Road to Bloody Sunday, pp. 78-81. S. V. Zubatov, "Zubatov-
shchina," Byloe, 1917, no. 4 (26), p. 170.

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 Petersburg's First Mass Labor Organization 259

resentment of challenges to his authority in the Assembly, so that it is

questionable whether he ever actually consented to a transfer of author-
ity to worker leaders at all, let alone planned and intended it from the
outset. Yet Gapon clearly also believed that such a transfer of authority
should (and did) take place, and regarded it as an important principle.
He had written provisions for eventual self-administration into his two
previous plans for self-help organizations among the poor and he
seemed sincerely committed to it. Although he had difficulty actually
giving over his authority to worker leaders, he did seem to believe it
was the proper thing to do and did at least allow them considerable
initiative within the ruling circle and at branch meetings.
Gapon's political views were a hodge-podge of traditional beliefs and
half-digested opinions on the role of labor in transforming society. On
the one hand, he wrote that as late as the fall of 1904 he still "imagined
the Tsar to be very kindhearted and noble, and thought that if an ap-
peal could be made directly to him he would grant [constitutional]
rights."38 On the other hand, he had in the very same period taken to
describing grandiose plans for the future of the Assembly.

No one can imagine [he told Ivan Pavlov] what will emerge from our
future "Workers Union." In two or three years all 200,000 Petersburg work-
ers will be members of our union-and the provinces? We will develop
[our] activity throughout Russia; all industrial centers, including distant
and out-of-the-way places, will be drawn into the "Union"; we will cover
all Russia with a network of our organizations; it will be a gigantic organ-
ization, of a kind that has not yet seen the light of day... . We will have
such strength that everything will be subordinated to the worker and the
toiling people generally.39

Pavlov treated these words as a combination of bravado and self-

delusion. But although Gapon left some skeptical, he apparently im-
pressed others with this vision. Seeking to win the allegiance of a small
group of radical workers, he told them in March 1904: "We will unite
all the workers in Russia. There might be an explosion, general or eco-
nomic, and we will then put forward political demands."40 This recalls
his mention of "the critical moment" in the lengthy passage cited earlier.
Gapon was familiar with developments among the Zubatovists in Odes-
sa and Moscow, and could easily have anticipated some kind of dra-
matic denouement if his double game were ever discovered by the au-
thorities. He seems to have been prepared to confront the government
if that became necessary, but his vision also contained hope in the As-
38 Gapon, Story of My Life, p. 135.
39 Pavlov, 'Iz vospominanii," p. 34.
40 Karelin, "Vospominaniia," p. 107.

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 260 The Russian Review

sembly's gradual, peaceful, and uninterrupted expansion throughout

the country, without having to "put forward political demands." This
trade-unionist utopianism no doubt made Gapon more attractive in the
eyes of some workers, but when the "critical moment" actually did
come, it could find no more imaginative form than an appeal to the
goodwill of the Tsar. Hence, it represented not Gapon's political vision
but marked the absence of one.
This is not to question Gapon's sincerity, only his political judgment.
The guiding element in his views was not political, but moral. He pos-
sessed a fervent, quasi-syndicalist belief in the intrinsic worth of pro-
letarian self-help and self-rule. The advantage of such a view is that it
seemed to be a direct expression of the feelings of workers, with whom
he had such close and extensive contact.

They often told me how much they would like to obtain the right of estab-
lishing a really free professional organization, explaining to me what ad-
vantages it would bring them. Some of them were already acquainted with
the publications of the revolutionary parties, and they used to repeat to
me ideas they had there gathered, unconsciously helping in this way to
extend my own horizon. It was not a case, therefore, of propaganda among
the workmen by an educated person, but rather, on the contrary, the work-
men who moved me to a perception of how alone their needs could be
satisfied.41

Characteristically, Gapon implies that there was something morally su-

perior about learning from workers, even though he was only encoun-
tering through them the ideas of another "educated person." Gapon's
workerism42 was not a substitute for a developed strategy and direc-
tion, and the formation of a viable organization without providing
these things meant that it would eventually come under the influence of
those who could provide them. Gapon was indeed a "naive idealist,"
as a Bolshevik observer once dubbed him, in that he relied on the sin-
cerity of his intentions to see him through to a successful conclusion.
Of course, he did not think of himself as naive; quite the contrary.
The very breadth and lack of structure in his long-term views left him
great flexibility in dealing with short-term, day-to-day problems. He
managed things as they came and left "political" considerations to his
colleagues in the Secret Committee, regarding himself as the "practical
man" and them as the "dreamers." However, Gapon's pragmatism was
not appreciated among the better-informed Assembly leaders, who

41 Gapon, Story of My Life, pp. 76-77. This passage is inexplicably missing from
the Russian translation: Istoriia moei zhizni, p. 43.
42 "Workerism" is a translation of the French "ouvrierisme": "Systbme qui con-
sid6re les ouvri6rs comme seul qualifies pour diriger un mouvement populaire."
Grand Larousse de la langue fran9aise en sept volumes (Paris, 1976), 5:3,382.

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 Petersburg's First Mass Labor Organization 261

were imbued with the sometimes inflated intellectualism characteristic

of educated Russian society. Pavlov explained that

it was difficult for him to pause mentally over any problem for long, he
hastened to be done with it quickly one way or another; he could permit
any compromises just to achieve the most immediate goal, and herein lay
his weakest side; he did not have consistent views: today things seemed
one way to him because he had not thought over the situation properly,
and tomorrow [they seemed different] not because he thought them over
that day-he would have forgotten the facts of the case-but because life
itsel had shown that yesterday's solution of the problem was incorrect,
and he would take another position, perhaps no less erroneous. But, thanks
to his cleverness and resourcefulness he always extricated himself more
or less satisfactorily. Naturally, such cleverness was very desirable, but it
would have been even more desirable for a leader of the workers' cause
not to need such resourcefulness.43

This characteristic of Gapon-inconsistent pragmatism and respond-

ing to "life itself' rather than to the demands of a principled strategy
-certainly enhanced the distrust in which he was held by those who
knew about or suspected his connections with the police. Yet they
mingled distrust with sympathy for his dedication to workers. "Gapon's
closest associates understood him well and took into account both his
desirable and undesirable sides," Pavlov continued. "Right up to Jan-
uary ninth they not only did not completely trust Gapon, but even
watched over him and his activities quite steadily."44
At the same time Gapon began increasingly to rely on the worker
militants of his inner circle in a way that went beyond the practical
requirements of the Assembly. Under their tutelage Gapon came in-
creasingly to want and need the respect of the revolutionary movement,
as became painfully clear from his pilgrimages to exiled revolution-
aries in Western Europe after 9 January. Among revolutionaries he
found perhaps some of the selflessness and dedication that he missed
so much in the Church. He later wrote of the period of the Assembly:

.. There was hardly a moment of peace, and yet this was the happiest
time of my life.
The best day of all was Saturday, when the members of my Secret
Committee, together with some other trusted workmen, gathered in my
tiny rooms to talk over our common business.... We talked till the small
hours; sometimes, indeed, some of my friends went straight from my rooms
to their morning work. I felt now that life was not aimless and useless;
but there was no time to think of myself .... My clothes were ragged, but
what did that matter? The work was going splendidly.4?
43 Pavlov, "Iz vospominanii," p. 43.
44 Ibid.
4 Gapon, Story of My Life, p. 119.

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262 The Russian Review

Gapon's lack of a political strategy, the instability of his day-to-day

behavior, and his admiration for those with a politically grounded com-
mitment to the labor movement help explain the nature of his depen-
dence on his politically adept assistants and his own political shift to
the left under their influence. With the surprisingly rapid growth of
the Assembly in 1904 the bold plans of 1903 became a frightening re-
sponsibility, and his need for the steadfastness and self-assurance of the
experienced labor militants increased accordingly. This dependence
was never openly acknowledged by Gapon, of course, and he remained
to all appearances the unquestioned leader of the Assembly. But it did
not escape the attention of close observers and perhaps lay at the basis
of Gapon's own statement (cited earlier). that intelligent workers would
eventually rise to the leadership of the organization.
Hence Gapon was neither a convinced Zubatovist nor the sole archi-
tect of the independent, if problematic, workers' organization that the
Assembly had become on the eve of 9 January. As its nominal leader
and only link with the guarantors of its legal existence, he held a posi-
tion of undoubted preeminence, even within the Secret Committee. But
his incomplete and unstable political views were to lose him the full
trust and allegiance of the more thoughtful and radical worker leaders
and to provide an opening to the better-informed veterans of the radical
labor movement among his assistants. Gapon's own desire to do right
by the workers and his openness to radical views meant that he too
came under their influence and gradually gave way to their drive to
commit the Assembly to the nationwide oppositionist movement that
arose in the second half of 1904.

Part II of this study will appear in the October 1981 issue of the RR-ed.

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 ERRATA

The first article of this issue of The Russian Review, "Petersburg's Firs
Labor Organization: The Assembly of Russian Workers and Father Gapon, P
by Gerald D. Surh on page 242, footnote 4, should read:

4 Sablinsky's interpretation gives Gapon's ideas and initiative overweening

portance and assigns his closest collaborators a clearly subordinate role.
Shuster, Peterburgskie rabochie v 1905-1907 gg. (Leningrad, 1976), whose ch
on Gapon (pp. 59-95) is the most complex and objective recent Soviet acc
takes the opposite ground: he has minimized discussion of Gapon's motives
a point that the priest appears as a mere pawn of events and of his radical assis
The present article attempts to give a balanced and persuasive account, accu
portraying the contributions of both Gapon and his assistants and describin
nature of their interdependence in what was for both a new and daring exper

Also on page 359 in the Contributors to This Issue section Gerald D. Suhr
read: Gerald D. Surh.

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