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intelligentsia, all of whom they considered to be
responsible for the spread of “foreign” revolu-
tionary socialist and liberal ideas among the Rus-
sian people. While endorsing better conditions
for workers and peasants, they also shared a
yearning for the old ideals of autocracy and
nationalism bound together by Russian Ortho-
doxy. Their public activities ranged from popular
demonstrations where crowds would carry icons
and portraits of the royal family, while they sang
patriotic songs, to organized pogroms against
Jews, as well as intimidation of radical university
students and other revolutionary “sympathiz-
ers.” The Black Hundreds found support within
small sectors of the police, the officer corps, the
Russian Orthodox Church, the landed nobility,
and the lower middle classes, but their actual
membership was far below the millions they
claimed at the time. The Union of the Russian
People stood out from the others, partly for the
leadership provided by a St. Petersburg physi-
cian, A. I. Dubrovin, and partly because of some
positive public references to the group on the
part of
NICHOLAS II
. With the victory of the
OCTO
-
BER REVOLUTION
in 1917, the Black Hundreds dis-
appeared from Russian public life; Dubrovin was
executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.
alyptic imagery of Symbolism. Beyond his poetry
he participated in public life, writing articles that
explored the cultural gap between the intelli-
gentsia and the masses, which had long bedev-
iled most attempts at wide-ranging social change.
In 1917 he took part in the Muraviev Commis-
sion, which investigated czarist leaders after the
FEBRUARY REVOLUTION
. He welcomed the revolu-
tion but characteristically interpreted it as a
symbolic historical moment with apocalyptic
connotations. His most lasting literary legacy is
the remarkable poem
The Twelve,
which scandal-
ized both sides of the revolutionary divide with
its haunting imagery comparing 12 Red Guards
with the 12 apostles as they move through Pet-
rograd following a fleeting vision of Christ. It
remains the most artistically significant, contem-
porary literary celebration of the 1917 Revolu-
tion. Just before his death at an early age, he
protested against the increasingly oppressive
atmosphere under communist rule.
Bloody Sunday
A massacre of demonstrators at the Winter Palace
in St. Petersburg that marks the beginning of the
1905 Revolution. The background to the events
of Blood Sunday deal with the activities of the
Assembly of St. Petersburg Factory Workers, a
group led by Father
GAPON
, an activist priest with
links to the city police. Gapon had organized a
group of workers in the spirit of the ideals of
“police socialism,” inspired by Sergei
ZUBATOV
.
The group, however, had been infiltrated by
Social Democratic revolutionaries who pressed a
more radical agenda than Gapon was willing to
follow, organizing a strike at the Putilov plant
that quickly spread to other parts of the city.
Whether driven to prove his credentials with his
workers or because he sympathized with their
demands, Gapon agreed to organize a march to
the czar's palace to petition for basic economic
and political reforms. On Sunday, January 9,
1905 (O.S.) a procession of workers and families
marched to the palace, where they were met by
troops of cavalry and mounted police who
Blok, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich
(1880-1921)
poet
Born in St. Petersburg, Blok was brought up in
the family of his maternal grandparents after his
parents separated. A published poet since 1903,
he graduated in 1906 from St. Petersburg Uni-
versity with a degree in philology. Soon after, he
married the daughter of the noted chemist
Dmitrii
MENDELEEV
. His early views were those of
the liberal gentry, shaped by the intellectual
influence of Vladimir
SOLOVIEV
and the Russian
countryside near Moscow. Shy and reclusive, he
nevertheless became one of the most popular
poets of the Silver Age, capturing the mood of
the moment with poems that combined the feel-
ings of a populist, penitent noble with the apoc-
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