GAPON, Georgii Aleksandrovich.

[in Cyrillic:] Istoriia moei zhizni [The story of my life].

[Berlin,] Berlinskoye knigoizdatel’stvo, 1925. 8vo, pp. 148, [1] contents, [1] advertisements; edges browned, else clean in recent cloth, the original printed wrappers bound in. First edition in the original Russian. The book starts: ‘I saw in a dream. A gang of wild dogs of various breeds and sizes was mercilessly savaging the motionless body of a giant, which lay in the dirt, while a huntsman stood watching them, egging them on.’ This gives a fair impression of the dramatic register of its author’s life. Gabon (1870–1906) – priest, police informer, patriot, debauchee, revolutionary, émigré – will be best remembered for instigating and leading the huge 22 January 1905 procession to the Winter Palace. Gapon, appealing to the Tsar as Father of his People, had expected that Nicholas II would welcome the petition made by 150,000 workers for legislation to ensure better conditions and protect those people from exploitation. The procession was met by armed police and Cossacks; over 100 workers were killed. Ever since the day has been known as Bloody Sunday. Gapon had been financed by the security services, and by foreign embassies, and was effectively betrayed by the security services. He went abroad and, for a year or so, lived a loose life, and joined a revolutionary party. In 1906, he was executed in a Finnish farmhouse by members of that party who heard him through a thin wall offering money to their leader, Rutenberg, who had arranged the encounter, to betray them to the secret police. Gapon’s book, written in exile, precedes his return to the Baltic area and explains his role and intention in organizing the Bloody Sunday demonstration. It was published in English in 1905 (by Chapman in London) and 1906 (by E. P. Dutton in New York).

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• ordernr.: H250.12

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