Oh thank you too Vladm. And here's the wiki link on Elizabeth Dilling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Dilling I know how you all like to know things about authros.
I know they call her "virulently anti-semitic" but I don't think she was. She just wanted to protect America from a big Jewry conspiracy and Roosevelt's socialist agenda. And that thing they wrote about trying her for sedition. Well the judge died so I really don't think it counts.
And this thing Belochka says about Rutenberg being Gapon's pal just like Dilling says. Well I sat down for a minute to think about that. Here's what I came up with:
To call Rutenberg and Gapon “pals” is an egregious over-simplification of a complex relationship that evolved in extraordinary circumstances. Such an over-simplification might be good for punctuating an ideological point, but it is of little use in understanding history.
Gapon had not welcomed the revolutionaries into his movement, instead believing that working with state authorities was the most effective means of addressing the plight of the workers. Even when he eventually had to admit revolutionaries, it was because the spreading awareness of his complicity with the police was beginning to undermine his credibility as someone interested in the workers’ welfare. Gapon was confronted with a choice of admitting revolutionaries into his organization or watching the workers be peeled away by more radical advocates. And the revolutionaries who were admitted held Gapon in open contempt, quickly moving to co-opt his agenda and to marginalize him.
The personal bond between Gapon and Rutenberg was forged on Bloody Sunday, when Rutenberg rescued Gapon from the melee, thereby possibly saving his life. As was discussed elsewhere, Bloody Sunday left Gapon devastated and disoriented. All the stars he had steered by up until then – belief in the tsar’s ultimate goodness if he only knew the truth, belief that the bureaucracy was the real problem, and belief that working within the system was best – shifted in the firmament when the troops opened fire on the marchers.
Yes, Gapon fled the country on the heels of Rutenberg. But, naive as Gapon was in many ways, rather than joining with Rutenberg and others in a revolutionary movement, Gapon began trying to convince Rutenberg to join with him in becoming a police agent. In fact, it was this attempt – and the revelation that Gapon was still in touch with the tsar’s police from abroad – that spawned the plot to murder Gapon. And one of the four plotters, Yevno Azef, was himself revealed in 1908 to be an Okhrana double agent.
You are really going to have to do better than simply labeling Gapon and Rutenberg “pals” to build a case that Gapon ever became truly committed to revolution . . . and you’re certainly going to have to do better to show that he had been so before Bloody Sunday.
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When one's interpretation of events lines up so nicely with a racist crank such as Elizabeth Dilling, one really might consider going back to the drawing board. Just a thought.
