That's what I had thought at first, thanks Cuprum, but it is very odd. I wondered if there was some old Russian idiom or proverb that had escaped me.
The defenders were surrounded, so I don't think it is a reference to running away. Given they were White officers, for suicide if over-run?
Would a rural Russian estate or postal station of 1918 have walls so high that they needed to be scaled by ropes?