When Sergei Zubatov was expelled from the St. Petersburg Assembly of Factory and Mill Workers, Georgii Gapon took control of the operation. Gapon’s father – Apollon Feodrorovich – had served as an elected elder in the village were Gapon grew up, and he proved to be a fantastic role model for how his son should lead. When Georgii Gapon was a boy, he and his father had often discussed village politics, and Apollon had taken the time to teach his son about the royal government . Under its new leader, the worker’s organization flourished, growing by nearly twenty-five percent . However, Georgii Gapon was raised in a fairly wealthy family – for a commoner – and while his mother was illiterate , his father made enough money to support Gapon and his siblings. This was not the case for many families in Russia. When serfdom was finally abolished under Tsar Alexander II, it left most of the newly liberated serfs in debt, with no way to pay the money off. These now “free” people were given the worst of the land, and new, high taxes claimed any crops that the farmers did manage to grow