THE incidents of January 30 1972, when 14 civilians lost their lives amidst the terror inflicted by British colonial troops in Derry, remains etched in the memory of the city and the island.

Ireland’s Bloody Sunday remains a reminder of just how far a colonial order in London will go to maintain control of the indigenous Irish in their homes and communities.

The Irish Bloody Sunday is one of endless comparable accounts throughout republican history, but it is important to note that imperialists throughout the world employ similar strategies to subjugate populations to the whims of their ruling class, even within their own domestic boundaries.

The events in Russia in January 1905 are particularly relevant when analysing this. The tsarist autocracy, hell-bent on stubbing out resistance to its rule, ruthlessly turned on those fighting for political and economic reform in a massacre that was also dubbed “Bloody Sunday.”

The costly defence against British imperial efforts in the Crimean War three decades before had forced the regime to concede limited economic reforms to an aspiring bourgeois class, producing a new wave (however limited) of industrialisation throughout the country.

As the urban population began to play a crucial role in national economic production by the early 1890s, class-driven tensions began to influence the wider movement for political reform, with industrial action and a new atmosphere of worker organisation becoming a threat for the tsarist ruling class.

A climate of rising unpopularity forced the Romanov dynasty to gamble. Nicholas II and his close advisers remained adamant that further imperial expansion in Manchuria at the expense of the Japanese could prompt a “one-nation” ethos and prosperity that would inspire class reconciliation.

Their bungling efforts produced nothing short of a national crisis. With Russian fiscal and military endeavours so heavily focused on the war with the Japanese in mainland China, rising food shortages across national boundaries ensured an ever-increasing acceleration of popular discontent with the tsarist regime that threatened to permanently expose the frailties of the state.

Future legitimacy of the Romanov empire seemed bound to a successful culmination of the Russo-Japanese war, with rising protests ever eager to strike a fatal blow at what Lenin described as the “rotten core” of a fortress that had once been seen as impenetrable.

Indeed, even though the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party (RSDLP) had split into Lenin’s Bolshevik and Julius Martov’s Menshevik factions over theoretical differences in 1903, rising membership of the party ensured that many remained hopeful that calamities at Port Arthur and beyond could determine real change for working people at home.

The pendulum swung towards revolutionary ambition in the early days of 1905, with the Japanese landing several crucial victories against tsarist forces, most notably at the battle of Mukden, where Russian troops had significantly outnumbered Japanese state forces and still been dealt a crushing defeat.

Amid the debacle of family members being slaughtered at the front and an ever-increasing food crisis, Russian workers voted with their feet — a wave of strikes erupted in protest against the war, most importantly factories producing weaponry for the war.

With tsarist war efforts now bereft of supplies and lacking support within working-class communities across the nation, protests gathered momentum and greater levels of organisation.

Tensions had reached fever pitch, and a growing awareness began to spread among industrial workers that the opportunity for change and further concessions from the tsarist ruling class could be lost without a lasting mobilising effort on government office.

By January 8 workers had effectively stopped the spread of right-wing newspapers in the capital and sufficiently sabotaged electricity supplies to many tsarist government and military buildings across other major cities.

The dialectic of contradictory forces had reached the critical point of conflict upon Russia’s shores — industrial concessions made by the tsar in the wake of the Crimean War had spawned a proletarian undercurrent that now had the desire and organisation to challenge for a society built upon their own economic interests.

Workers from St Petersburg to Moscow had built the battleships and weaponry that were being sunk and destroyed by the Japanese in the Tsushima Strait and beyond and were now willing to construct their own theatre of hostilities against a tsarist ruling class at home.

The protests and strikes built towards a single demonstration on January 9, mobilising thousands of workers to march upon the Winter Palace in objection to the conduct of tsarist officials and Nicholas II himself.

Involvement from a rural peasantry boosted already impressive numbers, but with this swelling of countryside influence came more conservative approaches — an industrial class enthused by Marxism had to contend with religious influence among the protest that advocated a mere checking and balancing of tsarist authority rather than expropriating it.

The growing sway of Orthodox priests on a large number of rural dissenters still influenced by tsarist traditions in spite of the national situation ensured that the protest itself became more conciliatory than originally planned, with a petition drawn up to the “tsar-father” trusting that he would listen sympathetically and grant further concessions to the poor.

For those who had brought major cities to a skidding halt in the early part of 1905 it was a pill worth swallowing.

But what followed would be nothing short of ruling-class murder. Even with the large contingent of rural voices chanting “God save the tsar” and singing religious hymns, the protest was met by roadblocks and a volley of bullets.

The shooting of innocent, unarmed civilians in cold blood pierced the winter air. Two hundred people were killed and over 800 were wounded.

Workers, wives, children, priests and bystanders were subjected to the very real punishment that a ruling class will inflict upon those who dare to step out of line and refuse to bend the knee before capital.

The event cemented the dissatisfaction of an already incensed population beyond measure, with even many rural peasantry shaking off their conservative affiliations to push politically leftwards.

Applications to join both the Bolshevik and Menshevik wings of the RSDLP began to go beyond the party’s previous capacity, with Lenin describing it as the radicalisation of a generation.

Even as the tsar hurried to proclaim a Consultative Duma (parliament) in the aftermath, further strikes across industrial hubs and railway networks gained momentum as workers retaliated, looting firearms to protect themselves.

Just like the events of Derry in 1972, ruling-class murder of a peaceful, conservative-minded demonstration had evidenced just how far the capitalist class will go to secure their hegemonic order over ordinary people.

We must remain keenly  aware in contemporary times that the ruling class of all countries, including our own, remain unconcerned about the democratic wishes of ordinary people if it conflicts with their interests.

And just as the Bolsheviks rose to power in subsequent years through collective energy and organisation, we too must unite as workers to demand a rewritten society that favours us rather than our oppressors.