Lena massacre

The incident did much to stimulate revolutionary feeling in Russia, and Alexander Kerensky's reporting of it in the Duma brought him to public notice for the first time.

The venture produced large profits for its British and Russian shareholders, who included Aleksei Putilov (a director), Count Sergei Witte, and Empress Maria Fyodorovna.

On March 17, the workers established their demands: an 8-hour workday, a 30% raise in wages, the elimination of fines, and the improvement of food delivery.

The workers were met by soldiers, who began shooting at the crowd by the order of Captain Treshchenkov, resulting in hundreds of dead and wounded.

[8] Socialist parties, like the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks, used that tragedy and the public outrage it sparked to further promote their political leanings throughout the Empire.

The massacre greatly increased tension and unrest in factories and workshops, where the demands for better pay and conditions were yet to be reached throughout the Empire.

The Duma also passed a law which introduced insurance benefits, in times of sickness and accident as well as creating worker representatives, two months after the Lena massacre.

His colourful reports of the incident greatly promoted widespread knowledge of the event, and also advanced his career from a backbencher to a popular leader of the Duma, as well as head of the Provisional Government of 1917.

Joseph Stalin declared: "The Lena shots broke the ice of silence, and the river of popular resentment is flowing again.

"[12] It has been suggested that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin adopted his more popular alias after the river Lena—Lenin—after this event, although he had in fact started using it years earlier, in 1901.