J. T. Murphy
Source: Workers’ Life, September 2, 1927
Publisher: Communist Party of Great Britain
Transcription/Markup: Brian Reid
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2008). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Moscow, Monday
Moscow yesterday presented an extraordinary sight. Great crowds of workmen, clerical employees and intellectuals, assembled in the parks, squares, open spaces, theatres and clubs at meetings dedicated to the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti.
A striking feature of the meetings was the appearance of political emigrants from etc, who declared that in their prisons such countries as Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, hundreds and thousands of Saccos and Vanzettis were awaiting their turn for death at the hands of gaolers who fully equalled the Great Powers in cruelty.
“Three weeks ago I left Poland,” said Comrade Berg. “There are 6,000 political prisoners. The Polish capitalists are making hasty war preparations. All munition factories are working 24 hours a day.”
At 4 p.m.—the moment for the cremation—a solemn silence was observed by the hundreds of thousands, not only in Moscow, but all over the U.S.S.R.
A “Pravda” editorial says: “Sacco and Vanzetti were Anarchists, and failed to understand that victory over the capitalist yoke is solely possible by means of a revolutionary struggle for the rule of the working class. This does not prevent the proletariat of the U.S.S.R. from reverently bowing its head before the martyrs.
“But it also obliges the workers of the Soviet Union to appeal to the toilers of the world, now demonstrating their will to fight against the capitalists, and to call upon them to draw exclusively class and revolutionary conclusions.”
A special memorial issue of “Pravda,” contains articles by Communists of many countries, which stress the big lesson of the international wave of working class protest against the Boston murders—namely, that the workers are gradually emancipating themselves from capitalist and Social-Democratic tutelage, and in the impending capitalist war on the U.S.S.R. they will form a united front in its defence.
At Leningrad a mass meeting of foreign sailors now in port took place at the International Seamen’s Club, British German, Norwegian and Swedish sailors were present, and passed a strong resolution of protest against the executions. At Kieff a street is being named after the martyrs.