that day seventeen thousand Russians sobbed with their young leader on the public square of Vladivostok.
A Pledge to
the Dead.
Sukhanov knew that many tears were an indulgence, and that he had a big and serious task to perform. Fifty feet behind him was the British Consulate, and fifty rods before him were the waters of the Golden Horn with the frowning guns of the Allied Fleet. He wrenched himself away from his grief and gathering himself together began his message. With an ever mounting passion of earnestness he spoke, closing with words destined to become the rallying cry for the workers in Vladivostok and the Far East:—
"Here, before the Red Staff Building where our comrade gruzchiki were slain, we swear by these red coffins that hold them, by their wives and children that weep for them, by the red banners which float over them, that the Soviet for which they died shall be the thing for which we live, or, if need be, like them die. Henceforth the return of the Soviet shall be the goal of all our sacrifice and devotion. To that end we shall fight with every means. The bayonets have been wrested from our hands, but when the day comes and we have no guns, we shall fight with sticks and clubs, and when these are gone, then with our bare fists and bodies. Now it is for us to fight only with our minds and spirits. Let us
