John Reed's Revolutionary Account

[Hawk1981]

John Reed's passion for his subject is evident from the start of his book Ten Days That Shook the World, "This book is a slice of intensified history--history as I saw it. It does not pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the November Revolution, when the Bolsheviki, at the head of the workers and soldiers, seized the state power of Russia and placed it in the hands of the Soviets."

John Reed was an American journalist dispatched to Russia to write a series of articles for American Socialist Journals. He arrived in Petrograd in September, 1917, and for the next six months observed the events in Russia as the Bolsheviks seized power. As historian Theodore Draper noted, "These were the days that shook John Reed. He went to Russia purely as a journalist, but he was not a pure journalist. He could not resist identifying himself with underdogs, especially if they followed strong, ruthless leaders. Reed was first and foremost a great reporter, but he was at his best reporting a cause that he could make his own."

Reed started in journalism working formal jobs at mainstream magazines, but sought to establish himself as a freelance journalist. After circulating poems and an essay about a trip to Europe, he broke through with a publication in The Saturday Evening Post followed by other works accepted by Collier's and The Century Magazine. His serious interest in social issues and labor relations led to his radicalization, and he joined the staff of the Socialist journal The Masses in 1913.

Sent to Mexico to cover the Mexican Revolution, Reed traveled with Pancho Villa's army for four months. The resulting series of magazine articles brought Reed a national reputation as an outstanding war correspondent. When the First World War broke out in the summer of 1914, Reed made his way to Europe and over the next two years traveled through nearly all of the belligerent countries, seeking interviews and writing articles.

Reed was bitterly opposed to the war and disappointed by the general collapse in working class solidarity and its replacement by nationalist zeal. Seeing the war as a falling out among commercial rivals, he wrote, "We who are Socialists, must hope--we may even expect--that out of this horror of bloodshed and dire destruction will come far-reaching social changes..." Cautioning against being duped by editorials promoting Liberalism going forth to Holy War against tyranny, Reed reminds his readers, "This is not our war."

Arriving in Petrograd at just the right time and place to witness the October Revolution, he was present when the Bolshevik's captured the Winter Palace from the Kerensky government. As an enthusiastic supporter of the new regime, he worked for a time translating decrees and official news into English. Reed's closeness to the new government's inner circle allowed him to meet with Trotsky and Lenin.

After a difficult journey, Reed returned home to New York to face charges for violating the Sedition Act from the content of his magazine articles. He was eventually acquitted, and finished writing Ten Days That Shook the World in time for publication in early 1919.

In the years since its publication, critics have praised Reed's account of the events he witnessed, despite their general opposition to his political beliefs. George Kennan, American diplomat and historian, wrote that, "Reed's account of the events of that time rises above every other contemporary record for its literary power, its penetration," and "its command of detail."

John Reed died in Russia of Typhus shortly after his return to the country in October, 1920. He is one of three Americans buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

 

[Hawk1981]

Reed was prosecuted under the Sedition Act of 1918, passed during the First World War. The law covered a broad range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds.

The Act forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for five to 20 years.

The US Supreme Court upheld the Sedition Act in Abrams v. United States (1919). Subsequent Supreme Court decisions, such as Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), make it unlikely that similar legislation would be considered constitutional today. As part of a sweeping repeal of wartime laws, Congress repealed the Sedition Act on December 13, 1920, though several people convicted under the law, including Eugene Debs, continued to serve their sentences.

 

[Hawk1981]

Louise Bryant, who married fellow journalist John Reed in 1916, was an American feminist, political activist, and journalist best known for her sympathetic coverage of Russia and the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution.

Her news stories, distributed by the Hearst syndicate during and after her trips to Petrograd and Moscow, appeared in newspapers across the United States and Canada in the years immediately following World War I. A collection of articles from her first trip was published in 1918 as Six Red Months in Russia.

The Bryant–Reed story is told in the 1981 film Reds, starring Diane Keaton as Bryant and Warren Beatty as Reed.

John Reed and Louise Bryant, 1916

 

[Thunderbird]

To hell with Lenin and his useful idiots:

Lenin Paints Himself Black With His Own Words (Published 1996)

Richard Bernstein reviews book The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive, edited by Richard Pipes; Pipes photo (S)

www.nytimes.com

 

[theHawk]

The modern day radical left are the 21st century’s Bolsheviks. Ruthless, vile, inhuman pieces of shit. The only “good” thing about the last week was that the world got to see the radical left for exactly what they are.

 

[Tom Paine 1949]

Fine objective OP. There are NO modern equivalents of early 20th Century Bolsheviks. Not anywhere — and especially not in the U.S.A. The world of crumbling Czarist autocracy, an infant bourgeois government & parliament unwisely sacrificing itself to its creditors by remaining in World War I, the disruptions of industrial revolution and giant factories in the midst of a vast feudal peasant economy, the revolutionary socialist movements in all their diversity and contradictions, this world has vanished, never to return. Nevertheless it is possible to get a taste of that world by reading John Reed’s on-the-spot day-by-day and even hour-by-hour account.

I read "Ten Days That Shook the World" when I was a young radical protesting the Vietnam War ... and it shook my world. It is a great exciting read, filled with details and reports that only a fearless and enthusiastic on-the-scene observer could have uncovered. Of course the enthusiasm among workers and anti-war soldiers and the poor womenfolk of St. Petersburg that Reed describes, organized in "Soviets," could not be sustained over the course of the long Civil War. Instead there arose in the period of “War Communism” a highly centralized, increasingly bureaucratized and militarized Communist Party, and ultimately Stalin's personal totalitarian dictatorship.

I was surprised to learn that Louise Bryant's early reporting was carried by the Hearst newspaper chain.

I personally thought the Reds movie was rather poorly done, though I suppose it was not fundamentally unfair in its portrayal of Reed. Dr. Zhivago it was not.

 

[whitehall]

Another (foreign based?) post that takes it for granted that Americans will recognize that "Revolution" wasn't the miracle that happened in 1776 but the political monstrosity involving communists?