January 22, 1905
A group of workers led by the radical priest Georgy Apollonovich Gapon marched to the czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to make their demands for reform. Imperial forces opened fire on the demonstrators, killing and wounding hundreds. Strikes and riots broke out throughout the country in outraged response to the massacre, to which Czar Nicholas responded by promising the formation of a series of representative assemblies, or Dumas, to work toward reform.
