The Romanovs and the Lena Goldfields Massacre

In April 1912, far from the glittering court of St. Petersburg, a strike at the Lena goldfields in Siberia turned into a massacre that shook the Romanov Empire. Troops fired on unarmed miners, killing at least 170 men, women, and children. The Lena massacre ignited a wave of strikes across Russia—over 300,000 workers walked out—and became a rallying cry for revolutionaries. But who ordered the shooting? Why did the tsarist government back the mining company, Lenzoto, even as it exploited workers in brutal conditions? This episode unpacks the remote disaster that exposed the regime's reliance on violence to maintain order, two years before the Great War. We follow the bitter gold rush along the Lena River, the appalling conditions in the taiga, the workers' 61 demands, and the cover-up that followed. We also look at the aftermath: the government's bungled investigation, the Duma's fury, and how the massacre radicalised a new generation, including a young Bolshevik named Joseph Stalin. A forgotten tragedy that lit the fuse for 1917. #LenaMassacre #Romanovs #LenaGoldfields #1912 #Siberia #RussianEmpire #Strikes #Lenzoto #JosephStalin #StateDuma #ImperialRussia #GoldRush #Revolution #WorkerRights #TsarNicholasII #FexingoHistory #History #EasternEurope Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo