Lena massacre
shooting of striking miners in northeast Siberia on 17 April 1912
The Lena Massacre or Lena Execution (Russian: Ленский расстрел, romanized: Lensky rasstrel) refers to the shooting of goldfield workers on strike in northeast Siberia near the Lena River on 17 April [O.S. 4 April] 1912.
The strike had been provoked by exceptionally harsh working conditions, and when the strike committee was arrested, a large crowd marched in protest. They were fired on by soldiers of the Imperial Russian Army, causing hundreds of casualties. The incident did much to stimulate revolutionary sentiment in Russia, and Alexander Kerensky's reporting of it in the Duma brought him to public notice for the first time.
Background
The incident took place at the goldfields of the Lena Gold Mining Joint Stock Company (Lenzoloto), located along the shores of the Lena River, about 28 miles northeast of the town of Bodaybo in the north of Irkutsk Oblast. The venture produced large profits for its British and Russian shareholders, who included Aleksei Putilov (a director), Count Sergei Witte, and Empress Maria Fyodorovna. At the time of the strike, 66% of its shares were owned by Lena Goldfields, a company registered in London and traded in London, Paris and Saint Petersburg. 70% of Lena Goldfields, or about 46% of Lenzoloto, was in the hands of Russian businessmen and managed by a committee of the Russian investors of the company; 30% of Lena Goldfields, or about 20% of Lenzoloto, was in the hands of British businessmen. The remaining 30% of Lenzoloto was owned by the Gintsburg family (also spelled Günzburg and other variants) and their companions.
Working conditions were exceptionally harsh, with miners having to work fifteen to sixteen hours a day.
“Lena massacre” enters the record as shooting of striking miners in northeast Siberia on 17 April 1912. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lena, massacre and shooting can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q578858. Authority coordinates are 58.185, 114.584. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lena massacre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.