All who were able to do so turned and fled, among
them Father Gapon.
Bloody Sunday, as the day is known in Russian annals, is generally regarded
as the beginning of the First Revolution. Immediately people began to talk
of armed resistance. On the evening of the day of the tragedy there was a
meeting of more than seven hundred Intellectuals at which the means for
carrying on revolution was the topic discussed. This was the first of many
similar gatherings which took place all over Russia. Soon the Intellectuals
began to organize unions, ostensibly for the protection of their
professional interests, but in reality for political purposes. There were
unions of doctors, writers, lawyers, engineers, professors, editors, and so
on. Quietly, and almost without design, there was being effected another
and more important union, namely, the union of all classes against
autocracy and despotism.
The Czar gave from his private purse fifty thousand rubles for the relief
of the families of the victims of Bloody Sunday. On the 19th of January he
received a deputation of carefully selected "loyal" working-men and
delivered to them a characteristic homily, which infuriated the masses by
its stupid perversion of the facts connected with the wanton massacre of
Bloody Sunday.
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