9 January] 1905 in St Petersburg, Russia, when demonstrators, led by Father Georgy Gapon, were fired upon by soldiers of the Imperial Guard as they marched towards the Winter Palace to present a petition to Tsar Nicholas II.

Bloody Sunday caused grave consequences for the tsarist authorities governing Russia: the events in St. Petersburg provoked public outrage and a series of massive strikes that spread quickly to the industrial centres of the Russian Empire.

[2] The emancipation of the serfs resulted in the establishment of a permanent working class in urban areas, which created a strain on traditional Russian society.

Peasants "were confronted by unfamiliar social relationships, a frustrating regime of factory discipline, and the distressing conditions of urban life.

Their abuse of power, made evident by the long working hours, low wages, and lack of safety precautions, led to strikes in Russia.

Gapon, this organization served as: …a noble endeavor, under the guidance of truly Russian educated laymen and clergy, to foster among the workers a sober, Christian view of life and to instill the principle of mutual aid, thereby helping to improve the lives and working conditions of laborers without violent disruption of law and order in their relations with employers and the government.In December 1904, six workers at the Putilov Ironworks in St. Petersburg were fired because of their membership in the Assembly, although the plant manager asserted that they were fired for unrelated reasons.

Virtually the entire workforce of the Putilov Ironworks went on strike when the plant manager refused to accede to their requests that the workers be rehired.

[15] The majority of Russian workers retained their traditional conservative values of Orthodoxy, faith in the autocracy, and indifference to political life.

Their petition was written in subservient terms and ended with a reminder to the tsar of his obligation to the people of Russia and their resolve to do what it took to ensure their pleas were met.

Gapon, who had an ambiguous relationship with the tsarist authorities, sent a copy of the petition to the Minister of the Interior together with a notification of his intention to lead a procession of members of his workers' movement to the Winter Palace on the following Sunday.

A cabinet meeting, held without any particular sense of urgency that same evening, concluded that the police would publicize his absence and that the workers would accordingly probably abandon their plans for a march.

These comprised units of the Imperial Guard, who provided the permanent garrison of Saint Petersburg and Cossacks, plus infantry regiments brought in by rail in the early morning of 9 January from Reval and Pskov.

The troops, who now numbered about 10,000, had been ordered to halt the columns of marchers before they reached the palace square but the reaction of government forces was inconsistent and confused.

There was no single encounter directly before the Winter Palace, as often portrayed, but rather a series of separate collisions at the bridges or other entry points to the central city.

[23] As late as 2 pm large family groups were promenading on the Nevsky Prospekt as was customary on Sunday afternoons, mostly unaware of the extent of the violence elsewhere in the city.

A detachment of the Preobrazhensky Guards, previously stationed in the Palace Square where about 2,300 soldiers were being held in reserve, now made its way onto the Nevsky and formed two ranks opposite the Alexander Gardens.

The writer Leo Tolstoy was emotionally affected by the event,[29] reflecting the revulsion of liberal, socialist and intellectual opinion within Russia itself.

Strikes began to erupt outside of St. Petersburg in places such as Moscow, Warsaw, Riga, Vilna, Kovno, Reval, Tiflis, Baku and Batum.

[30] Tsar Nicholas II attempted to appease the people with a duma; however, the autocracy eventually resorted to brute force near the end of 1905 in order to curtail the burgeoning strike movement that continued to spread.

Any problems that the lower classes faced were associated with the boyars of Russia; however, after Bloody Sunday the tsar was no longer distinguished from the bureaucrats and was held personally responsible for the tragedy that occurred.

While it was unrealistic for the marchers to expect Nicholas to ride out into the Palace Square to meet them, his absence from the city, against at least some advice, reflects a lack of imagination and perception that he was to show on other occasions.

[34] The sixth of Shostakovich's 1951 Ten Poems on Texts by Revolutionary Poets (whose music the symphony quotes) is also called "The Ninth of January".

[35] Maxim Gorky's novel The Life of a Useless Man (1908) portrays the effects of Bloody Sunday on the Russian working class and operations of the spies employed by the tsar.