January 18th
Another day has begun and yet another decision has been made Father Gapon has decided to make a personal appeal to the Tsar. He has wrote a petition asking to give us healthier working conditions, we have requested a reduction in working days from 10hours to 8hours, a increase in wages and an improvement in working conditions amongst others. The response to our petition amongst the workers is overwhelming as an infinite amount of people have signed the petition. We shall go to the winter palace on the 22nd of January to present our petition, in hopes to get a positive response to the requests we have made. I live in hope till the day comes for us to present our petition to the tsar and receive a response expectantly a constructive one at that.
22nd January 1905
As we marched through the Winter palace we were road blocked by the army, we attempted to get them out of our way in a calm and rational manner however despite our attempts they refused to move and let us in. Unable to think of any alternative we only saw one action we could take that could possibly give us an opportunity to move the army out of our path. Crouching down to the ground the protestors and I gathered stones of the ground and regrettably threw them at the army, although it was regrettable we had no alternative, the army put us in a tough situation from which we could not get out of without putting up a fight.
The army inevitably fought back using water cannon and rubber bullets to disperse of the crowd we had formed, however as they begun to fight back we refused to back down, we wanted our rights to be given to us, we wanted to be treated with respect and be addressed to by others with some common decency, is that so much to ask? What we did was not a crime we could have gone much further with the matter however we did not, we merely stood up for our own rights.
We all began to scream and panic scattering away from one another as a trigger was pulled and a gun shot was heard going off. Within seconds thirteen of our allies are lying dead on the ground they had just minutes ago picked stones up from, others were wounded and the remainder in shock.
The army when questioned claimed they only returned fire, however how could this be true when we approached the winter palace unarmed? It is undeniably clear that we could not have fired any shots, we did not fire any shots, and the only shots that were fired were those of the armed force.
