Georgy Gapon (17 February 1870-10 April 1906) was a Russian Orthodox priest and political activist. He was concerned with the proletarian struggle and was associated with the Socialist Revolutionary Party, but he was executed by the SRs when they discovered that he was a police informant.
Biography[]
Georgy Gapon was born on 17 February 1870 in Poltava, Ukraine, Russian Empire, the son of a cossack father and a peasant mother. Gapon's mother raised him in the Orthodox Christian religion, and Gapon would become a priest in St. Petersburg. He often preached to the working class people in factories and slums, and he became a proletarian hero. Starting in 1904, Gapon began to become involved in anti-czarist activities, and he was forced to flee to Switzerland to avoid being arrested for his role in the 1905 Russian Revolution; there, he joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and he helped the SRs in their fight against the government. Gapon returned to Russia in October 1905, and he told his friend Pinhas Rutenberg about his status as a double agent as a police informant, saying that it was beneficial to the cause. Rutenberg reported Gapon to the SR Combat Organization, which decided to kill the traitor. On 10 April 1906, he was hanged in his apartment by the SRs after he was condemned by the comrades' court.