All the long day the funeral procession passed, coming in by the Iberian Gate and leaving the Square by way of the Nikolskaya, a river of red banners, bearing words of hope and brotherhood and stupendous prophecies, against a back-ground of fifty thousand people,—under the eyes of the world’s workers and their descendants forever….
One by one the five hundred coffins were laid in the pits. Dusk fell, and still the banners came drooping and fluttering, the band played the Funeral March, and the huge assemblage chanted. In the leafless branches of the trees above the grave the wreaths were hung, like strange, multi-coloured blossoms. Two hundred men began to shovel in the dirt. It rained dully down upon the coffins with a thudding sound, audible beneath the singing….
The lights came out. The last banners passed, and the last moaning women, looking back with awful intensity as they went. Slowly from the great Square ebbed the proletarian tide….
I suddenly realised that the devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven. On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory to die….
Chapter XI The Conquest of Power (See App. XI, Sect. 1)
DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLES OF RUSSIA (See App. XI, Sect. 2)
… The first Congress of Soviets, in June of this year, proclaimed the right of the peoples of Russia to self-determination.
The second Congress of Soviets, in November last, confirmed this inalienable right of the peoples of Russia more decisively and definitely.
Executing the will of these Congresses, the Council of People’s Commissars has resolved to establish as a basis for its activity in the question of Nationalities, the following principles:
(1) The equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia.
(2) The right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, even to the point of separation and the formation of an independent state.
(3) The abolition of any and all national and national religious privileges and disabilities.
(4) The free development of national minorities and ethnographic groups inhabiting the territory of Russia.
Decrees will be prepared immediately upon the formation of a Commission on Nationalities.