Serving ten years for sedition in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, a 66-year-old Eugene Debs greets in prose the Soviet Republic on the fourth anniversary of the October Revolution.

‘Lion-Hearted Russia’ by Eugene V. Debs from Debs Freedom Monthly. Vol. 1 No. 4. November, 1921.

The Soviet Republic stands impregnable as Gibraltar!

The Russian Soviet Republic is battling for its life with a heroism that has no parallel in history.

Arrayed against these dauntless liberators are all the imperial powers of the world.

If Russia triumphs capitalist imperialism is doomed in every land on earth. It is the mightiest stake over which a conflict was ever waged.

Russia is fighting, as men, women and children have never fought before, for the overthrow of tyranny and the liberation of the race.

She is fighting with a valor unmatched, for proletarian emancipation.

For six long years these heroes have stood their ground and held their own against the fiercest assaults ever launched against a struggling people.

Army after army have been beaten back by these intrepid warriors of the revolution, who fear no foe and know no defeat. Invasion, starvation, conspiracy and counter-revolution have all been tried in vain.

Lenine and Trotsky and their ragged, half-starved battalions have achieved immortal fame, and the triumphant advance of this mighty host of liberation is inspiring the nations and shaking the world.

Behold her! Russia in her glorious dawn! Her heroic sons have crowned her with the diadem of freedom and she stands forth, holding aloft the inextinguishable torch–the inspiration of the toiling masses and the hope and promise of mankind.

Debs Freedom Monthly was published in Chicago to highlight Debs imprisonment, the curtailment of civil rights and free speech, political prisoners, and demand his and others freedom after his jailing in 1919 for sedition. Beginning in August, 1921 and edited by Irwin St. John Tucker, the Monthly carried an eight-point program. After Debs’ early 1922 release the journal was renamed ‘Debs Magazine’ and continued as a vehicle for his writings until 1923, when illness and a contracting Socialist Party closed the magazine.