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Georgiy Apollonovich Gapon (Russian: ???????? ???????????? ??????; 17 February [O.S. 5 February] 1870 — 10 April [O.S. 28 March] 1906) was a Russian Orthodox priest and a popular working class leader before the Russian Revolution of 1905.
Father Gapon organized the Assembly of Russian Factory and Mill Workers of St. Petersburg, which was patronized by the Department of the Police and the St. Petersburg Okhrana (secret police). The Assembly's objectives were to defend workers' rights and to elevate their moral and religious status. Only persons of Russian Orthodox denomination were eligible to join its ranks. Soon the organization had twelve branches and 8,000 members, and Gapon tried to expand activities to Kiev and Moscow. Gapon was not simply an obedient instrument of the police; cooperating with them, he tried to realize his own plans.
From the end of 1904, Gapon started to cooperate with radicals who championed the abolition of the Tsar's autocracy.
On January 22 [O.S. January 9] 1905, the day after a general strike burst out in St. Petersburg, Gapon organized a workers' procession to present a petition to the Tsar, which ended tragically (Bloody Sunday 1905).