Humpday History Highlight

January 22, 1905 - The Bloody Sunday Massacre

Well on its way to losing a war against Japan in the Far East, czarist Russia is wracked with internal discontent that finally explodes into violence in St. Petersburg in what will become known as the Bloody Sunday Massacre.

To drum up support for the unpopular war against Japan, the Russian government allowed a conference of the zemstvos, or the regional governments instituted by Nicholas’s grandfather Alexander II, in St. Petersburg in November 1904. The demands for reform made at this congress went unmet and more radical socialist and workers’ groups decided to take a different tack.

On January 22, 1905, a group of workers led by the radical priest Georgy Apollonovich Gapon marched to the czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to make their demands. Imperial forces opened fire on the demonstrators, killing and wounding hundreds. Strikes and riots broke out throughout the country in outraged response to the massacre, to which Nicholas responded by promising the formation of a series of representative assemblies, or Dumas, to work toward reform. (H/T - History.com)

Natch, Nicholas' "reforms" went over like a fart in church, and nothing could stop the tide of revolution. By the end of World War I, the Romanov family was deposed and soon assassinated, and the communists took control.

I think we all know how that turned out.