The Story of My Life

by George Gapon

Excerpt from The Story of My Life



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294 pages, Paperback

Published August 24, 2018

Reviews

[Hughie Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a great prequel to the Russian revolution. It details the miserable state the Russian peasantry and working classes endured, as well as one deeply patriotic man's attempt to change history. Father George Gapon was a priest turned labor activist after seeing how the church was intentional benefiting from the country's poor state. He was often in trouble with the church for his teachings (because of dangerous ideas like collective bargaining and limits on work hours). My only complaint about this story is that it ends right as the revolution really gets started! I would pair this with Trotsky's history of the Russian revolution for a clear picture. Gapon is up there with the Guevara's and the Castro's, for his people. A true working class hero who sought to improve the lives of his countrymen.

[Eric Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many people with only a passing famililarity with Russian history will have heard about the revolution of 1905 — and about the massacre of unarmed workers by the Tsar’s troops in January of that year. That event came to be known as “Bloody Sunday”. And the man who stood at the head of that giant, peaceful demonstration was a Russian Orthodox priest, Father Gapon.

This very readable autobiography was written just months later, published in 1905 in London. I always thought that instant publication of celebrity biographies was a relatively new innovation — but they clearly existed 120 years ago as well. And Gapon was quite the celebrity following his dramatic escape from the clutches of the tsarist police force, the Okhrana.

But here’s the irony: Gapon was himself an agent — a paid agent — of that same police force, and was allowed to form mass organisations of workers in St. Petersburg under his control, making them less of a threat than workers’ organisations under the control of, for example, Social Democrats.

Gapon of course does not acknowledge in this book that he was an Okhrana agent — but he is quite open about his meetings with the police, including the infamous Zubatov who came up with the strategy of police-controlled trade unions to keep the workers on a tight lead.

Within a few months of the book’s publication, Gapon was lured to a shack outside of the imperial capital in Russia by a friend who he had attempted to recruit for the Okhrana. In the room next door, a group of workingmen who had followed Gapon and believed in him, were waiting and listening. As Gapon was bragging about how much money one could earn as an Okhrana spy, the workers burst into the room and killed the priest.

[Richard Seltzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving autobiography of Father Gapon, who led the march on Bloody Sunday in 1905.

[olivia · Rating 3 out of 5]

“I looked around at the bodies that lay prostrate around me and thought, “This is the work of our Little Father, the Tsar.””