John Silas Reed
Encyclopedia
John Silas "Jack" Reed (Portland, Oregon
, October 22, 1887 – Moscow
, October 17, 1920) was an American journalist
, poet, and communist activist, best remembered for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution
, Ten Days that Shook the World
. He was married to writer and feminist Louise Bryant
.
. His mother, Margaret Green Reed, was the daughter of a leading Portland citizen who had made a fortune through three enterprises: as owner of the first gas works in Oregon, owner of the first pig iron
smelter on the west coast, and as second owner of the Portland water works. John's father, Charles Jerome Reed, was the representative of an agricultural machinery manufacturer who had come to town from the East
. With his ready wit, he quickly won acceptance in Portland’s business community. His parents were married in 1886.
A sickly child, young "Jack" grew up surrounded by nurses and servants, and his upper-class playmates were carefully selected. His brother, Harry, was two years his junior. Jack and his brother were sent to the recently-established Portland Academy, a private school. Jack was bright enough to pass his courses but could not be bothered to work for top marks, as he found school dry and tedious. In September 1904, Jack was sent to Morristown School
in New Jersey
to prepare for college as his father, who never attended a university, wanted his sons to go to Harvard. At this prep school
, Jack continued his track record of poor classroom performance, although he did make the football
team and showed literary promise.
Reed failed in his first attempt on the admission exam but passed on his second try and in the fall of 1906 he entered Harvard College
. Tall, handsome, and light-hearted, Jack threw himself into all manner of student activities. He was a member of the cheerleading team, the swimming team, and the dramatic club. He served on the editorial boards of the Lampoon
and the Harvard Monthly and as president of the Harvard Glee Club
. He wrote a play produced by the Hasty Pudding Club
, and was made Ivy orator and poet. Reed failed to make the Harvard teams for football and crew
, but excelled in other sports of lesser prestige, swimming and water polo.
Jack also attended meetings of the Socialist Club
, over which his friend Walter Lippmann
presided, but he never joined. Still, the club left its impact on his psyche. The group had social legislation introduced into the state legislature, attacked the university for failing to pay its servants living wages, and petitioned the administration for the establishment of a course in Socialism
. Reed later recalled:
Reed graduated from Harvard College in 1910, and that summer he set out to see more of the "dull outside world," visiting England, France, and Spain before returning home to America the following spring.
journalist Lincoln Steffens
, who appreciated Reed's skills and intellect at an early date. Steffens landed his young admirer an entry-level position on the American Magazine, reading manuscripts, correcting proofs, and later helping with the composition. Reed supplemented his insufficient salary by taking an additional job as the business manager of a new short-lived quarterly magazine called Landscape Architecture.
Reed made his home in Greenwich Village
, a burgeoning hub of poets and artists. He came to love New York, relentlessly exploring it and writing poems about it. His formal jobs on the magazines paid the rent, but it was as a freelance journalist that Jack sought to establish himself. He collected rejection slips circulating an essay and short stories about his six months in Europe, eventually breaking through in The Saturday Evening Post
. Within a year, Reed had other work accepted by Collier's
, The Forum, and The Century Magazine
. One of his poems had been set to music by composer Arthur Foote
, and the editors at The American had come to see him as a contributor and begun to publish his work. John Reed was a young man on the rise.
His serious interest in social problems was first aroused at about this time by Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, and once aroused it quickly led him to a far more radical position than theirs. In 1913 he joined the staff of The Masses
, edited by Max Eastman
and his sister Crystal
. To this publication Jack contributed more than 50 articles, reviews, and shorter pieces.
The first of Reed's many arrests came in Paterson, New Jersey
, in 1913, for attempting to speak on behalf of strikers in the New Jersey silk mills
. The harsh treatment meted out by the authorities to the strikers and a short jail term which followed further radicalized him. Jack allied himself with the syndicalist trade union the Industrial Workers of the World
at this time. Jack's account of his experiences appeared in June as an article "War in Paterson." During the same year, following a suggestion made by IWW leader Bill Haywood
, Jack put on "The Pageant of the Paterson Strike" in Madison Square Garden
as a benefit for the strikers.
In the autumn of 1913 John Reed was sent to Mexico by the Metropolitan Magazine
to report the Mexican Revolution
. He shared the perils of Pancho Villa
's army for four months, present with Villa's Constitutional Army when it defeated Federal forces at Torreón
, opening the way for its advance on Mexico City. Reed's time with the Villistas resulted in a series of outstanding magazine articles that brought Jack a national reputation as a war correspondent. Reed deeply sympathized with the plight of the peons and vehemently opposed American intervention, which came shortly after he left. Jack adored Villa, while Carranza
left him cold. Jack's Mexican reports were later republished in book form as Insurgent Mexico, which appeared in 1914.
On April 30, 1914, John Reed arrived in Colorado
, scene of the recent Ludlow massacre
. There he spent a little more than a week and investigated the events, spoke on behalf of the miners, wrote an impassioned article on the subject ("The Colorado War", published in July), and came to believe much more deeply in class conflict. That summer he spent in Provincetown, Massachusetts
with Mabel Dodge and her son, putting together Insurgent Mexico and interviewing President Wilson
on the subject. The resulting report, much watered down at White House
insistence, was not a success.
declared war on France, he set sail for neutral Italy, having been sent by the Metropolitan. He met his lover, Mabel Dodge, in Naples
, and the pair made its way to Paris. Reed saw the war as having emerged from imperialist commercial rivalries and showed little sympathy for any of the participants. In an unsigned piece entitled "The Traders’ War," published in the September 1914 issue of The Masses, Jack passionately wrote:
In France, he was frustrated by wartime censorship and the difficulty of accessing the front. Reed and Dodge went to London, and Dodge soon left for New York, to the relief of Reed. The rest of 1914 he spent drinking with French prostitutes and pursuing an affair with a German woman. The pair went to Berlin in early December. While there, Jack interviewed Karl Liebknecht
, who was one of the few socialists in Germany to vote against war credits. Reed was deeply disappointed by the general collapse in working-class solidarity promised by the Second International
, and by its replacement with militarism
and nationalism
.
He returned to New York in the middle of that month and occupied himself writing about the war. A return to Eastern Europe followed in 1915, a journey on which he was accompanied by Canadian artist and frequent Masses contributor Boardman Robinson
. Traveling from Thessaloniki
, they met scenes of profound devastation in Serbia
(including a bombed-out Belgrade
), also going through Bulgaria
and Romania
. They passed through the Jewish Pale of Settlement
in Bessarabia
, and in Chełm they were arrested, incarcerated for several weeks and liable to be shot for espionage had not the American ambassador shown some interest.
Traveling to Russia, Reed was outraged to learn that the ambassador in Petrograd
was inclined to believe they were spies. Reed and Robinson were re-arrested when they tried to slip into Romania. This time it was the British ambassador (Robinson being a British subject) who finally secured permission for them to leave, but not before all their papers were seized in Kiev
. In Bucharest
the duo spent time piecing together their journey, with Reed at one point traveling to Constantinople
in hopes of seeing action at Gallipoli
. These experiences led to Reed's book, The War in Eastern Europe
, published in April 1916.
After returning to New York, he paid a visit to his mother in Portland, where he met and fell in love with Louise Bryant
, who joined him on the East coast in January 1916. Though happy, both had affairs with others rather freely, in accord with the bohemian sensibilities of sexual liberation in common currency in that day. Early in 1916 Reed met Eugene O'Neill
, and beginning that May the three rented a cottage in Provincetown. Not long after, Bryant and O'Neill began a romance.
That summer Reed donned his reporter's hat and covered the Presidential nominating conventions. Reed himself endorsed Woodrow Wilson
, believing that he would make good on his promise to keep America out of the war. The year proved an eventful one for Jack, highlighted by his November marriage to Louise Bryant in Peekskill
and an operation to remove a kidney conducted at Johns Hopkins Hospital
which forced his hospitalization until mid-December. The operation fortuitously rendered him ineligible for conscription and saved him later from the fate of a conscientious objector
. During 1916 he also published privately Tamburlaine and Other Poems in an edition of 500 copies.
As the country raced towards war, the radical Reed was marginalized: his relationship with the Metropolitan was over. Jack pawned his late father's watch and sold his Cape Cod
cottage to birth control
activist and sex educator Margaret Sanger
. When Wilson asked for a declaration of war on April 2, 1917, Reed shouted at a hastily-convened meeting of the People's Council in Washington
: "This is not my war, and I will not support it. This is not my war, and I will have nothing to do with it." In July and August Reed continued to write aggressive articles for The Masses
, which the Post Office
now refused to mail, and for Seven Arts, which as a result of an article by Reed and one earlier in the summer by Randolph Bourne
, had its financial backing cut off and ceased publication. Reed was stunned by the nation's pro-war fervor and his career lay in ruins.
. The pair were going as working journalists to see for themselves and report upon the sensational developments taking place in the fledgling republic of Russia. Traveling by way of Finland
, the pair arrived in the capital city of Petrograd immediately after the failed military coup
of monarchist General Lavr Kornilov
, an attempt to topple the Provisional Government
of Alexander Kerensky
by force of arms. Jack and Louise found the Russian economy was in shambles and several of the subject nationalities of the old empire, such as Finland and Ukraine
, autonomous and seeking to forge a military accommodation with Germany.
John Reed and Louise Bryant wound up at ground zero for the October Revolution
, in which the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (bolshevik) headed by Vladimir Lenin
toppled the Kerensky government in what they believed to be the first blow struck in a worldwide socialist revolution.
The food situation in the capital was dire. Jack later recalled:
A mood for radical change was in the air. The Bolsheviks, seeking an all-socialist government and immediate end to Russian participation in the war, sought the transfer of power from Kerensky to a Congress of Soviets, a gathering of elected workers' and soldiers' deputies to be convened in October. The Kerensky government saw this as a clear effort to replace its own regime with another and moved to shut down the Bolshevik press, issuing warrants of arrest for the Soviet leaders and preparing to transfer the troops of the Petrograd garrison, believed to be unreliable, back to the front. A Military Revolutionary Committee of the Soviets, dominated by the Bolshevik Party, determined to seize power on behalf of the future Congress of Soviets and at 11 pm on the evening of November 7, 1917, it captured the Winter Palace
, seat of Kerensky's government. Reed and Bryant were present during the fall of the Winter Palace, the symbolic event which initiated the Bolshevik Revolution.
Jack was an enthusiastic supporter of the new revolutionary socialist government and he went to work for the new People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, translating decrees and news of the actions of the new government into English. "I also collaborated in the gathering of material and data and distributing of papers to go into the German trenches," Reed later recalled.
Jack was close to the inner circle of the new government. He met Leon Trotsky
and was introduced to Lenin during a break of the Constituent Assembly
on January 18, 1918. By December, his funds were nearly exhausted and he took employment with an American, Raymond Robbins of the Red Cross
. Robbins wished to set up a newspaper promoting American interests; Reed complied, but in the dummy issue he prepared he included a warning beneath the masthead: "This paper is devoted to promoting the interests of American capital."
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly left Reed unmoved, and two days later, armed with a rifle, he joined a patrol of Red Guards
prepared to defend the Foreign Office from counter-revolutionary attack. Reed then attended the opening of the Third Congress of Soviets, where he gave a short speech promising to bring the news of the revolution to America, where he hoped it would "call forth an answer from America's oppressed and exploited masses." American journalist Edgar Sisson told Reed that he was being used by the Bolsheviks for their propaganda, a rebuke he accepted. In January, Trotsky, responding to Reed's concern about the safety of his substantial archive, offered Reed the post of Soviet Consul in New York; as the United States did not recognize the Bolshevik government, his credentials would almost certainly have been rejected and he faced prison (which would have given the Bolsheviks some propaganda material). The appointment was viewed as a massive blunder by most Americans in Petrograd, and the businessman Alex Gumberg directly approached Lenin, showing him a prospectus in which Reed called for massive American capital support for Russia and for the setting up of a newspaper to express the American viewpoint on the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk
. Lenin found the proposal unsavory and withdrew the nomination; thereafter, Reed only mentioned Gumberg's name with a string of epithets attached.
Both Jack and Louise netted books from their Russian experiences, with Louise's Six Red Months in Russia appearing first and Jack's 10 Days That Shook the World, published early in 1919, garnering the most notice.
While Louise had made her way home to the United States in January 1918, Jack did not reach New York City until April 28, 1918. On his way back to the USA Reed traveled from Russia to Finland; he didn't have a visa or passport while crossing to Finland
. In Turku
harbor, when Reed was boarding a ship
on his way to Stockholm
, Finnish police
arrested Reed and took him to Kakola prison in Turku
until he was released. From Finland, Reed traveled to Kristiania
, Norway
via Stockholm
. Because he remained under indictment in the Masses case, Jack was immediately met by federal authorities, who held him on board his ship for more than eight hours while they searched his belongings. Reed's irreplaceable papers were seized, the raw material from which he intended to write his book, and he was released upon his own recognizance after his attorney, Morris Hillquit
, promised to make him available at the Federal Building the next day. His papers were not returned to him until seven months later in November 1918.
. The first Masses trial ended in a hung jury the day before he arrived; the defendants, including himself, were to be retried, so after returning, he immediately posted $2,000 bail on April 29.
The second Masses trial also ended in a hung jury. In Philadelphia, he stood outside a closed hall on May 31, harangued a crowd of 1,000 until police dragged him away, was charged with inciting a riot, and posted $5,000 bail. He was now more aggressively political, intolerant, and self-destructive; his third arrest since his return from Russia came on September 14, when he was charged with violating the Sedition Act
and freed on $5,000 bail. This was a day after possibly the largest demonstration for Bolshevik Russia held in the United States (in The Bronx
), when Reed passionately defended the revolution, which he seemed to think was coming to America as well. He tried to prevent Allied intervention
, arguing that the Russians were contributing to the war effort by checking German ambitions in the Ukraine
and Japanese designs on Siberia
, but this came to naught.
On February 21-22, 1919, Bryant was fiercely grilled before a Senate
committee exploring Bolshevik propaganda activities in the US, but emerged resilient; Reed followed on the 22nd, delivering quick, subtle testimony which was, however, savagely distorted by the press. Later that day he went to Philadelphia to stand trial for his May speech; despite a hostile judge, press, and patriotic speech by the prosecutor, Reed's lawyer convinced the jury the case was about free speech, and he was acquitted. Returning to New York, Reed continued speaking widely and participating in the various twists of socialist politics that year. He served as editor of The New York Communist, the weekly newspaper issued by the Left Wing Section
of Greater New York.
Affiliated with the Left Wing of the Socialist Party
, Reed with the other radicals was expelled from the National Socialist Convention in Chicago on August 30, 1919. The radicals then split into two bitterly hostile groups, forming the Communist Labor Party
(Reed's, in the creation of which he had been indispensable) and, the next day, the Communist Party of America. Reed was the international delegate of the former, wrote its manifesto and platform, edited its paper, The Voice of Labor, and was denounced as "Jack the Liar" in the Communist Party organ, The Communist. Reed's writings from 1919 display doubts about Western-style democracy and defend the dictatorship of the proletariat
, which he saw as a necessary step that would prefigure the true democracy "based upon equality and the liberty of the individual."
and hoping to secure Comintern
backing for the CLP, he fled from America in early October on board a Scandinavian frigate by means of a forged passport, working his way to Bergen
as a stoker. Given shore leave, he disappeared to Kristiania
, crossed into Sweden on October 22, passed through Finland and made his way to Moscow by train. In the cold winter of 1919-1920, he traveled in the region around Moscow, observing factories, communes, and villages; filling notebooks; and carrying on an affair with a Russian woman. His feelings about the revolution were now ambiguous: on the one hand, he told Emma Goldman
, who had recently arrived aboard Buford and especially complained about the Cheka
, that the enemies of the revolution deserved their fate. However, he suggested that she see Angelica Balabanoff
, a critic of the current situation, indicating he wanted Goldman to hear the other side.
Reed, although facing the threat of arrest in Illinois, tried to return home after February 1920. At that time, the Soviets organized a convention to establish a United Communist Party of America. Reed attempted to leave Russia through Latvia that month, but his train never arrived forcing him to hitch a ride in the boxcar of an eastbound military train to Petrograd. In March, he crossed into Helsinki
, where he had radical friends, including a future politician and SDKL
member of parliament
Hella Wuolijoki
, and, with their help, was hidden in the hold of a freighter. On the 13th, customs officials finally found him in a coal bunker. He was taken to the police station, where he maintained that he was the seaman "Jim Gormley". Eventually, the jewels, photographs, letters, and fake documents he had in his possession forced him to reveal his true identity. Although beaten several times and threatened with torture, he refused, however, to surrender the names of his local contacts. As a result of his silence, he was not able to be tried for treason
, and was instead convicted of smuggling and having jewels in his possession (102 small diamonds worth $14,000, which were confiscated).
The US Secretary of State
was satisfied with Reed's arrest and pressured the Finns for his papers. American authorities, however, remained indifferent to Reed's fate. Although Reed paid the fine for smuggling, he was still detained illegally, and his physical condition and state of mind deteriorated rapidly. He suffered from depression
and insomnia
, wrote alarming letters to Bryant, and threatened a hunger strike
on May 18. He was finally released in early June, and sailed for Tallinn
, Estonia
, on the 5th. Two days later, he traveled to Petrograd, recuperating from malnutrition and scurvy
caused by having been fed dried fish almost exclusively, but his spirits were high.
At the end of June, he traveled to Moscow and, after discussing with Bryant the possibility of her joining him, she gained passage on a Swedish tramp steamer and arrived in Gothenburg
on August 10. At the same time, Reed attended the second Comintern
congress. Although his mood was as jovial and boisterous as ever, his physical appearance had deteriorated; he was quite thin, seemed weak and was sallow and his face lined.
During this congress, he bitterly objected to the deference other revolutionaries showed to the Russians, who assumed the tide of revolutionary fervor was ebbing, making it necessary for the Communist party to work within the existing institutions – a policy Reed felt would be disastrous. He was contemptuous of the bully
ing tactics displayed during the congress by Karl Radek
and Grigory Zinoviev
, who ordered Reed to attend the Congress of the Peoples of the East
to be held at Baku
on August 15.
It was a long journey, five days by train through countryside devastated by civil war and infected by typhus
. Reed was reluctant to go and asked to arrive later, as he had planned to go first to Petrograd, where Bryant was arriving from Murmansk
. Zinoviev insisted Reed take the official train: "the Comintern has made a decision. Obey." Reed would normally have rebelled at being spoken to with such contempt, but he needed Soviet good-will at the moment and was not prepared for a final break with the Comintern, so he made the trip with great reluctance. Reed's actions and feelings during this time are a matter of speculation, but years after abandoning Communism, his friend Benjamin Gitlow
asserted that the treatment Reed received from Zinoviev filled Reed with bitter disillusionment for the Communist movement.
During his time in Baku, Reed received a telegram announcing Bryant's arrival in Moscow. He followed her there, arriving on September 15, and was able to tell her of the events of the preceding eight months. He appeared older and his clothes were in tatters. While in Moscow, he took her to meet Lenin, Trotsky, Lev Kamenev
, and other leading Bolsheviks and also to visit Moscow's ballet and art galleries.
Reed was determined to return home, but fell ill on September 25. At first thought to have influenza
, he was hospitalized five days later and was found to have spotted typhus
. Bryant spent all her time with him, but there were no medicines to be obtained because of the Allied blockade
. His mind started to wander, and then he lost the use of the right side of his body and could no longer speak. His wife was holding his hand when he died in Moscow on October 17, 1920. After a hero's funeral, his body was buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis
.
The uses of John Reed as a symbol in popular culture have been varied. Some have dismissed him as a "romantic revolutionary" and a "playboy" – a vapid dilettante pretending to profess revolutionary sensibilities. For the Communist movement to which he belonged, Reed became a symbol of the international nature of the Bolshevik revolution, a martyr buried at the Kremlin wall amidst solemn fanfare, his name to be uttered reverently as a member of the radical pantheon. Others, such as his old friend and comrade Benjamin Gitlow, made the claim that Reed had begun to shun the bureaucracy and violence of Soviet Communism late in his life and have thus sought to posthumously enlist Reed in their own anti-communist
cause.
John Reed has also been an influence upon the cinema. Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein
's influential 1927 silent film
October: Ten Days That Shook the World was based on Reed's book.
Half a century later, Warren Beatty made the 1981 film Reds, based on the life of John Reed. Warren Beatty
starred as Reed, while Diane Keaton
played the part of Louise Bryant and Jack Nicholson
that of Eugene O'Neill. The movie won three Academy Awards, and was nominated for nine others. Other film portrayals of Reed include the 1982 two-part Soviet production Red Bells, starring Franco Nero
, and the 1973 film Reed: Mexico Insurgente, based on his accounts of the Mexican Revolution, directed by Paul Leduc.
A persistent urban legend
exists that John Reed came from the family for which Reed College
, an elite liberal arts
school located in Portland, Oregon, was named. Despite the college's reputation for leftist politics, there is no truth to this rumor. The College was named for Simeon Reed by his widow Amanda Reed who donated a significant part of her inherited fortune to establish the college in 1911.
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, October 22, 1887 – Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, October 17, 1920) was an American journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, poet, and communist activist, best remembered for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, Ten Days that Shook the World
Ten Days that Shook the World
Ten Days that Shook the World is a book by American journalist and socialist John Reed about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 which Reed experienced firsthand. Reed followed many of the prominent Bolshevik leaders, especially Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek, closely during his time in Russia...
. He was married to writer and feminist Louise Bryant
Louise Bryant
Louise Bryant was an American journalist and writer. She was best known for her Marxist and anarchist beliefs and her essays on radical political and feminist themes. Bryant published articles in several radical left journals during her life, including Alexander Berkman's The Blast...
.
Early life
John Reed was born on October 22, 1887, in his maternal grandmother's mansion in Portland, OregonPortland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
. His mother, Margaret Green Reed, was the daughter of a leading Portland citizen who had made a fortune through three enterprises: as owner of the first gas works in Oregon, owner of the first pig iron
Pig iron
Pig iron is the intermediate product of smelting iron ore with a high-carbon fuel such as coke, usually with limestone as a flux. Charcoal and anthracite have also been used as fuel...
smelter on the west coast, and as second owner of the Portland water works. John's father, Charles Jerome Reed, was the representative of an agricultural machinery manufacturer who had come to town from the East
Eastern United States
The Eastern United States, the American East, or simply the East is traditionally defined as the states east of the Mississippi River. The first two tiers of states west of the Mississippi have traditionally been considered part of the West, but can be included in the East today; usually in...
. With his ready wit, he quickly won acceptance in Portland’s business community. His parents were married in 1886.
A sickly child, young "Jack" grew up surrounded by nurses and servants, and his upper-class playmates were carefully selected. His brother, Harry, was two years his junior. Jack and his brother were sent to the recently-established Portland Academy, a private school. Jack was bright enough to pass his courses but could not be bothered to work for top marks, as he found school dry and tedious. In September 1904, Jack was sent to Morristown School
Morristown-Beard School
Morristown-Beard School is a coeducational college-preparatory day school, serving students in sixth through twelfth grade, located in Morristown, in Morris County, New Jersey. Morristown-Beard School is the product of the 1971 merger of two institutions, Miss Beard's School for girls, founded in...
in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
to prepare for college as his father, who never attended a university, wanted his sons to go to Harvard. At this prep school
University-preparatory school
A university-preparatory school or college-preparatory school is a secondary school, usually private, designed to prepare students for a college or university education...
, Jack continued his track record of poor classroom performance, although he did make the football
History of American football
American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football. Both games have their origin in varieties of football played in Britain in the mid-19th century, in which a football is kicked at a goal and/or run over a line....
team and showed literary promise.
Reed failed in his first attempt on the admission exam but passed on his second try and in the fall of 1906 he entered Harvard College
Harvard College
Harvard College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is one of two schools within Harvard University granting undergraduate degrees...
. Tall, handsome, and light-hearted, Jack threw himself into all manner of student activities. He was a member of the cheerleading team, the swimming team, and the dramatic club. He served on the editorial boards of the Lampoon
Harvard Lampoon
The Harvard Lampoon is an undergraduate humor publication founded in 1876 at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.-Overview:Published since 1876, The Harvard Lampoon is the world's longest continually published humor magazine. It is also the second longest-running English-language humor...
and the Harvard Monthly and as president of the Harvard Glee Club
Harvard Glee Club
The Harvard Glee Club is a 60-voice, all-male choral ensemble at Harvard University. Founded in 1858 in the tradition of English and American glee clubs, it is the oldest collegiate chorus in the US. The Glee Club is part of the Holden Choruses of Harvard University, which also include the...
. He wrote a play produced by the Hasty Pudding Club
Hasty Pudding Club
The Hasty Pudding Club is a social club for Harvard students. It was founded by Nymphus Hatch, a junior at Harvard College, in 1770. The club is named for the traditional American dish that the founding members ate at their first meeting...
, and was made Ivy orator and poet. Reed failed to make the Harvard teams for football and crew
Rowing (sport)
Rowing is a sport in which athletes race against each other on rivers, on lakes or on the ocean, depending upon the type of race and the discipline. The boats are propelled by the reaction forces on the oar blades as they are pushed against the water...
, but excelled in other sports of lesser prestige, swimming and water polo.
Jack also attended meetings of the Socialist Club
Intercollegiate Socialist Society
The Intercollegiate Socialist Society was the a Socialist student organization from 1905-1921. It attracted many prominent intellectuals and writers and acted as the unofficial Socialist Party of America student wing...
, over which his friend Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann was an American intellectual, writer, reporter, and political commentator famous for being among the first to introduce the concept of Cold War...
presided, but he never joined. Still, the club left its impact on his psyche. The group had social legislation introduced into the state legislature, attacked the university for failing to pay its servants living wages, and petitioned the administration for the establishment of a course in Socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
. Reed later recalled:
All this made no ostensible difference in the look of Harvard society, and probably the club-men and the athletes, who represented us to the world, never even heard of it. But it made me, and many others, realize that there was something going on in the dull outside world more thrilling than college activities, and turned our attention to the writings of men like H.G. Wells and Graham WallasGraham WallasGraham Wallas was an English socialist, social psychologist, educationalist, a leader of the Fabian Society and a co-founder of the London School of Economics....
, wrenching us away from the Oscar WildianOscar WildeOscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...
dilettantismAmateurAn amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training....
which had possessed undergraduate litterateurs for generations.
Reed graduated from Harvard College in 1910, and that summer he set out to see more of the "dull outside world," visiting England, France, and Spain before returning home to America the following spring.
Bohemian journalist
John Reed had determined to become a journalist and he set out to make his mark in the big city in which that industry was based, New York. Jack made use of a valuable contact he had made at Harvard, the muckrakingMuckraker
The term muckraker is closely associated with reform-oriented journalists who wrote largely for popular magazines, continued a tradition of investigative journalism reporting, and emerged in the United States after 1900 and continued to be influential until World War I, when through a combination...
journalist Lincoln Steffens
Lincoln Steffens
-Biography:Steffens was born April 6, 1866, in San Francisco. He grew up in a wealthy family and attended a military academy. He studied in France and Germany after graduating from the University of California....
, who appreciated Reed's skills and intellect at an early date. Steffens landed his young admirer an entry-level position on the American Magazine, reading manuscripts, correcting proofs, and later helping with the composition. Reed supplemented his insufficient salary by taking an additional job as the business manager of a new short-lived quarterly magazine called Landscape Architecture.
Reed made his home in Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, a burgeoning hub of poets and artists. He came to love New York, relentlessly exploring it and writing poems about it. His formal jobs on the magazines paid the rent, but it was as a freelance journalist that Jack sought to establish himself. He collected rejection slips circulating an essay and short stories about his six months in Europe, eventually breaking through in The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post
The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...
. Within a year, Reed had other work accepted by Collier's
Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....
, The Forum, and The Century Magazine
The Century Magazine
The Century Magazine was first published in the United States in 1881 by The Century Company of New York City as a successor to Scribner's Monthly Magazine...
. One of his poems had been set to music by composer Arthur Foote
Arthur Foote
Arthur William Foote was an American classical composer, and a member of the "Boston Six." The other five were George Whitefield Chadwick, Amy Beach, Edward MacDowell, John Knowles Paine, and Horatio Parker.The modern tendency is to view Foote’s music as “Romantic” and “European” in light of the...
, and the editors at The American had come to see him as a contributor and begun to publish his work. John Reed was a young man on the rise.
His serious interest in social problems was first aroused at about this time by Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, and once aroused it quickly led him to a far more radical position than theirs. In 1913 he joined the staff of The Masses
The Masses
The Masses was a graphically innovative magazine of socialist politics published monthly in the U.S. from 1911 until 1917, when Federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription. It was succeeded by The Liberator and then later The New Masses...
, edited by Max Eastman
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist. For many years, Eastman was a supporter of socialism, a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes...
and his sister Crystal
Crystal Eastman
Crystal Catherine Eastman was a lawyer, antimilitarist, feminist, socialist, and journalist. She is best remembered as a leader in the fight for women's right to vote, as a co-editor of the radical arts and politics magazine The Liberator, and as a co-founder of the Women's International League...
. To this publication Jack contributed more than 50 articles, reviews, and shorter pieces.
The first of Reed's many arrests came in Paterson, New Jersey
Paterson, New Jersey
Paterson is a city serving as the county seat of Passaic County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, its population was 146,199, rendering it New Jersey's third largest city and one of the largest cities in the New York City Metropolitan Area, despite a decrease of 3,023...
, in 1913, for attempting to speak on behalf of strikers in the New Jersey silk mills
Paterson Silk Strike of 1913
The 1913 Paterson silk strike was a work stoppage involving silk mill workers in Paterson, New Jersey. The strike, which involved demands for establishment of an eight-hour day and improved working conditions. The strike began on February 1, 1913, and ended six months later, on July 28.-History:The...
. The harsh treatment meted out by the authorities to the strikers and a short jail term which followed further radicalized him. Jack allied himself with the syndicalist trade union the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
at this time. Jack's account of his experiences appeared in June as an article "War in Paterson." During the same year, following a suggestion made by IWW leader Bill Haywood
Bill Haywood
William Dudley Haywood , better known as "Big Bill" Haywood, was a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World , and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party of America...
, Jack put on "The Pageant of the Paterson Strike" in Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
as a benefit for the strikers.
In the autumn of 1913 John Reed was sent to Mexico by the Metropolitan Magazine
Metropolitan Magazine (New York)
Metropolitan Magazine, known in its later years as Macfadden's Fiction Lover's Magazine, was a monthly periodical in the early 20th century with articles on politics and literature.-History:...
to report the Mexican Revolution
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Díaz. The Revolution was characterized by several socialist, liberal, anarchist, populist, and agrarianist movements. Over time the Revolution...
. He shared the perils of Pancho Villa
Pancho Villa
José Doroteo Arango Arámbula – better known by his pseudonym Francisco Villa or its hypocorism Pancho Villa – was one of the most prominent Mexican Revolutionary generals....
's army for four months, present with Villa's Constitutional Army when it defeated Federal forces at Torreón
Torreón
Torreón is a city and seat of the surrounding municipality of the same name in the Mexican state of Coahuila. As of 2010, the city's population was 608,836 with 639,629 in the municipality. The metropolitan population, including Matamoros, Coahuila, and Gómez Palacio and Lerdo in adjacent Durango,...
, opening the way for its advance on Mexico City. Reed's time with the Villistas resulted in a series of outstanding magazine articles that brought Jack a national reputation as a war correspondent. Reed deeply sympathized with the plight of the peons and vehemently opposed American intervention, which came shortly after he left. Jack adored Villa, while Carranza
Venustiano Carranza
Venustiano Carranza de la Garza, was one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution. He ultimately became President of Mexico following the overthrow of the dictatorial Huerta regime in the summer of 1914 and during his administration the current constitution of Mexico was drafted...
left him cold. Jack's Mexican reports were later republished in book form as Insurgent Mexico, which appeared in 1914.
On April 30, 1914, John Reed arrived in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...
, scene of the recent Ludlow massacre
Ludlow massacre
The Ludlow Massacre was an attack by the Colorado National Guard on a tent colony of 1,200 striking coal miners and their families at Ludlow, Colorado on April 20, 1914....
. There he spent a little more than a week and investigated the events, spoke on behalf of the miners, wrote an impassioned article on the subject ("The Colorado War", published in July), and came to believe much more deeply in class conflict. That summer he spent in Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown, Massachusetts
Provincetown is a New England town located at the extreme tip of Cape Cod in Barnstable County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 3,431 at the 2000 census, with an estimated 2007 population of 3,174...
with Mabel Dodge and her son, putting together Insurgent Mexico and interviewing President Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
on the subject. The resulting report, much watered down at White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
insistence, was not a success.
War correspondent
On August 14, 1914, shortly after GermanyGerman Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
declared war on France, he set sail for neutral Italy, having been sent by the Metropolitan. He met his lover, Mabel Dodge, in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, and the pair made its way to Paris. Reed saw the war as having emerged from imperialist commercial rivalries and showed little sympathy for any of the participants. In an unsigned piece entitled "The Traders’ War," published in the September 1914 issue of The Masses, Jack passionately wrote:
"The real War, of which this sudden outburst of death and destruction is only an incident, began long ago. It has been raging for tens of years, but its battles have been so little advertised that they have been hardly noted. It is a clash of Traders...
"What has democracy to do in alliance with Nicholas, the Tsar? Is it Liberalism which is marching from the Petersburg of Father Gapon, from the OdessaOdessaOdessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
of the pogromPogromA pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
s?...
"No. There is a falling out among commercial rivals....
"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 — and a long step forward towards our goal of Peace among Men.
"But we must not be duped by this editorial buncombe about Liberalism going forth to Holy War against Tyranny.
"This is not Our War."
In France, he was frustrated by wartime censorship and the difficulty of accessing the front. Reed and Dodge went to London, and Dodge soon left for New York, to the relief of Reed. The rest of 1914 he spent drinking with French prostitutes and pursuing an affair with a German woman. The pair went to Berlin in early December. While there, Jack interviewed Karl Liebknecht
Karl Liebknecht
was a German socialist and a co-founder with Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartacist League and the Communist Party of Germany. He is best known for his opposition to World War I in the Reichstag and his role in the Spartacist uprising of 1919...
, who was one of the few socialists in Germany to vote against war credits. Reed was deeply disappointed by the general collapse in working-class solidarity promised by the Second International
Second International
The Second International , the original Socialist International, was an organization of socialist and labour parties formed in Paris on July 14, 1889. At the Paris meeting delegations from 20 countries participated...
, and by its replacement with militarism
Militarism
Militarism is defined as: the belief or desire of a government or people that a country should maintain a strong military capability and be prepared to use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests....
and nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
.
He returned to New York in the middle of that month and occupied himself writing about the war. A return to Eastern Europe followed in 1915, a journey on which he was accompanied by Canadian artist and frequent Masses contributor Boardman Robinson
Boardman Robinson
Boardman Robinson was a Canadian-American artist, illustrator and cartoonist.-Early years:Boardman Robinson was born September 6, 1876 in Nova Scotia, Canada. He spent his childhood in England and Canada, before coming to Boston in the first half of the 1890s...
. Traveling from Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki , historically also known as Thessalonica, Salonika or Salonica, is the second-largest city in Greece and the capital of the region of Central Macedonia as well as the capital of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace...
, they met scenes of profound devastation in Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
(including a bombed-out Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
), also going through Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
and Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
. They passed through the Jewish Pale of Settlement
Pale of Settlement
The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...
in Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
, and in Chełm they were arrested, incarcerated for several weeks and liable to be shot for espionage had not the American ambassador shown some interest.
Traveling to Russia, Reed was outraged to learn that the ambassador in Petrograd
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
was inclined to believe they were spies. Reed and Robinson were re-arrested when they tried to slip into Romania. This time it was the British ambassador (Robinson being a British subject) who finally secured permission for them to leave, but not before all their papers were seized in Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
. In Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
the duo spent time piecing together their journey, with Reed at one point traveling to Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
in hopes of seeing action at Gallipoli
Gallipoli
The Gallipoli peninsula is located in Turkish Thrace , the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east. Gallipoli derives its name from the Greek "Καλλίπολις" , meaning "Beautiful City"...
. These experiences led to Reed's book, The War in Eastern Europe
The War in Eastern Europe
The War in Eastern Europe is a book that describes John Reed's second trip after the first World War broke out.-References:*Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/details/warineasterneuro00reeduoft...
, published in April 1916.
After returning to New York, he paid a visit to his mother in Portland, where he met and fell in love with Louise Bryant
Louise Bryant
Louise Bryant was an American journalist and writer. She was best known for her Marxist and anarchist beliefs and her essays on radical political and feminist themes. Bryant published articles in several radical left journals during her life, including Alexander Berkman's The Blast...
, who joined him on the East coast in January 1916. Though happy, both had affairs with others rather freely, in accord with the bohemian sensibilities of sexual liberation in common currency in that day. Early in 1916 Reed met Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
, and beginning that May the three rented a cottage in Provincetown. Not long after, Bryant and O'Neill began a romance.
That summer Reed donned his reporter's hat and covered the Presidential nominating conventions. Reed himself endorsed Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
, believing that he would make good on his promise to keep America out of the war. The year proved an eventful one for Jack, highlighted by his November marriage to Louise Bryant in Peekskill
Peekskill, New York
Peekskill is a city in Westchester County, New York. It is situated on a bay along the east side of the Hudson River, across from Jones Point.This community was known to be an early American industrial center, primarily for its iron plow and stove products...
and an operation to remove a kidney conducted at Johns Hopkins Hospital
Johns Hopkins Hospital
The Johns Hopkins Hospital is the teaching hospital and biomedical research facility of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, located in Baltimore, Maryland . It was founded using money from a bequest by philanthropist Johns Hopkins...
which forced his hospitalization until mid-December. The operation fortuitously rendered him ineligible for conscription and saved him later from the fate of a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
. During 1916 he also published privately Tamburlaine and Other Poems in an edition of 500 copies.
As the country raced towards war, the radical Reed was marginalized: his relationship with the Metropolitan was over. Jack pawned his late father's watch and sold his Cape Cod
Cape Cod
Cape Cod, often referred to locally as simply the Cape, is a cape in the easternmost portion of the state of Massachusetts, in the Northeastern United States...
cottage to birth control
Birth control
Birth control is an umbrella term for several techniques and methods used to prevent fertilization or to interrupt pregnancy at various stages. Birth control techniques and methods include contraception , contragestion and abortion...
activist and sex educator Margaret Sanger
Margaret Sanger
Margaret Higgins Sanger was an American sex educator, nurse, and birth control activist. Sanger coined the term birth control, opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established Planned Parenthood...
. When Wilson asked for a declaration of war on April 2, 1917, Reed shouted at a hastily-convened meeting of the People's Council in Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
: "This is not my war, and I will not support it. This is not my war, and I will have nothing to do with it." In July and August Reed continued to write aggressive articles for The Masses
The Masses
The Masses was a graphically innovative magazine of socialist politics published monthly in the U.S. from 1911 until 1917, when Federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription. It was succeeded by The Liberator and then later The New Masses...
, which the Post Office
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
now refused to mail, and for Seven Arts, which as a result of an article by Reed and one earlier in the summer by Randolph Bourne
Randolph Bourne
Randolph Silliman Bourne was a progressive writer and "leftist intellectual" born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and a graduate of Columbia University...
, had its financial backing cut off and ceased publication. Reed was stunned by the nation's pro-war fervor and his career lay in ruins.
Witness to the Russian Revolution
On August 17, 1917, John Reed and Louise Bryant set sail from New York to Europe, having first provided the State Department with legally sworn assurances that neither would represent the Socialist Party at a forthcoming conference in StockholmStockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. The pair were going as working journalists to see for themselves and report upon the sensational developments taking place in the fledgling republic of Russia. Traveling by way of Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, the pair arrived in the capital city of Petrograd immediately after the failed military coup
Kornilov Affair
The Kornilov Affair, or the Kornilov Putsch as it is sometimes referred to, was an attempted coup d'état by the then Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army, General Lavr Kornilov, in August 1917 against the Russian Provisional Government headed by Alexander Kerensky.-Background:Following the...
of monarchist General Lavr Kornilov
Lavr Kornilov
Lavr Georgiyevich Kornilov was a military intelligence officer, explorer, and general in the Imperial Russian Army during World War I and the ensuing Russian Civil War...
, an attempt to topple the Provisional Government
Provisional government
A provisional government is an emergency or interim government set up when a political void has been created by the collapse of a very large government. The early provisional governments were created to prepare for the return of royal rule...
of Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Kerensky
Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky was a major political leader before and during the Russian Revolutions of 1917.Kerensky served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Lenin was elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets following the October Revolution...
by force of arms. Jack and Louise found the Russian economy was in shambles and several of the subject nationalities of the old empire, such as Finland and Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, autonomous and seeking to forge a military accommodation with Germany.
John Reed and Louise Bryant wound up at ground zero for the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, in which the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (bolshevik) headed by Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...
toppled the Kerensky government in what they believed to be the first blow struck in a worldwide socialist revolution.
The food situation in the capital was dire. Jack later recalled:
The last month of the Kerensky regime was marked first by the falling off of the bread supply from 2 pounds a day to 1 pound, to half a pound, to a quarter of a pound, and, the final week, no bread at all. Holdups and crime increased to such an extent that you could hardly walk down the streets. The papers were full of it. Not only had the government broken down, but the municipal government had absolutely broken down. The city militia was quite disorganized and up in the air, and the street-cleaning apparatus and all that sort of thing had broken down — milk and everything of that sort."
A mood for radical change was in the air. The Bolsheviks, seeking an all-socialist government and immediate end to Russian participation in the war, sought the transfer of power from Kerensky to a Congress of Soviets, a gathering of elected workers' and soldiers' deputies to be convened in October. The Kerensky government saw this as a clear effort to replace its own regime with another and moved to shut down the Bolshevik press, issuing warrants of arrest for the Soviet leaders and preparing to transfer the troops of the Petrograd garrison, believed to be unreliable, back to the front. A Military Revolutionary Committee of the Soviets, dominated by the Bolshevik Party, determined to seize power on behalf of the future Congress of Soviets and at 11 pm on the evening of November 7, 1917, it captured the Winter Palace
Winter Palace
The Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was, from 1732 to 1917, the official residence of the Russian monarchs. Situated between the Palace Embankment and the Palace Square, adjacent to the site of Peter the Great's original Winter Palace, the present and fourth Winter Palace was built and...
, seat of Kerensky's government. Reed and Bryant were present during the fall of the Winter Palace, the symbolic event which initiated the Bolshevik Revolution.
Jack was an enthusiastic supporter of the new revolutionary socialist government and he went to work for the new People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, translating decrees and news of the actions of the new government into English. "I also collaborated in the gathering of material and data and distributing of papers to go into the German trenches," Reed later recalled.
Jack was close to the inner circle of the new government. He met Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
and was introduced to Lenin during a break of the Constituent Assembly
Russian Constituent Assembly
The All Russian Constituent Assembly was a constitutional body convened in Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. It is generally reckoned as the first democratically elected legislative body of any kind in Russian history. It met for 13 hours, from 4 p.m...
on January 18, 1918. By December, his funds were nearly exhausted and he took employment with an American, Raymond Robbins of the Red Cross
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is an international humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide which was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and to prevent and alleviate human...
. Robbins wished to set up a newspaper promoting American interests; Reed complied, but in the dummy issue he prepared he included a warning beneath the masthead: "This paper is devoted to promoting the interests of American capital."
The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly left Reed unmoved, and two days later, armed with a rifle, he joined a patrol of Red Guards
Red Guards (Russia)
In the context of the history of Russia and Soviet Union, Red Guards were paramilitary formations consisting of workers and partially of soldiers and sailors formed in the time frame of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
prepared to defend the Foreign Office from counter-revolutionary attack. Reed then attended the opening of the Third Congress of Soviets, where he gave a short speech promising to bring the news of the revolution to America, where he hoped it would "call forth an answer from America's oppressed and exploited masses." American journalist Edgar Sisson told Reed that he was being used by the Bolsheviks for their propaganda, a rebuke he accepted. In January, Trotsky, responding to Reed's concern about the safety of his substantial archive, offered Reed the post of Soviet Consul in New York; as the United States did not recognize the Bolshevik government, his credentials would almost certainly have been rejected and he faced prison (which would have given the Bolsheviks some propaganda material). The appointment was viewed as a massive blunder by most Americans in Petrograd, and the businessman Alex Gumberg directly approached Lenin, showing him a prospectus in which Reed called for massive American capital support for Russia and for the setting up of a newspaper to express the American viewpoint on the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk
The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was a peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, mediated by South African Andrik Fuller, at Brest-Litovsk between Russia and the Central Powers, headed by Germany, marking Russia's exit from World War I.While the treaty was practically obsolete before the end of the year,...
. Lenin found the proposal unsavory and withdrew the nomination; thereafter, Reed only mentioned Gumberg's name with a string of epithets attached.
Both Jack and Louise netted books from their Russian experiences, with Louise's Six Red Months in Russia appearing first and Jack's 10 Days That Shook the World, published early in 1919, garnering the most notice.
While Louise had made her way home to the United States in January 1918, Jack did not reach New York City until April 28, 1918. On his way back to the USA Reed traveled from Russia to Finland; he didn't have a visa or passport while crossing to Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
. In Turku
Turku
Turku is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River. It is located in the region of Finland Proper. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of the 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland...
harbor, when Reed was boarding a ship
Ship
Since the end of the age of sail a ship has been any large buoyant marine vessel. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing,...
on his way to Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
, Finnish police
Police
The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...
arrested Reed and took him to Kakola prison in Turku
Turku
Turku is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River. It is located in the region of Finland Proper. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of the 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland...
until he was released. From Finland, Reed traveled to Kristiania
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
, Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
via Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...
. Because he remained under indictment in the Masses case, Jack was immediately met by federal authorities, who held him on board his ship for more than eight hours while they searched his belongings. Reed's irreplaceable papers were seized, the raw material from which he intended to write his book, and he was released upon his own recognizance after his attorney, Morris Hillquit
Morris Hillquit
Morris Hillquit was a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of America and prominent labor lawyer in New York City's Lower East Side during the early 20th century.-Early years:...
, promised to make him available at the Federal Building the next day. His papers were not returned to him until seven months later in November 1918.
Radical political activist
Back in America, Jack and Louise took pains to defend the Bolsheviks and oppose American intervention, but a hyper-patriotic public incensed at Russia's departure from the war gave him a generally cold reception. While he was in Russia, his articles in The Masses and particularly a headline, "Knit a straight-jacket for your soldier boy", had been largely instrumental in bringing an indictment against that magazine for seditionSedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
. The first Masses trial ended in a hung jury the day before he arrived; the defendants, including himself, were to be retried, so after returning, he immediately posted $2,000 bail on April 29.
The second Masses trial also ended in a hung jury. In Philadelphia, he stood outside a closed hall on May 31, harangued a crowd of 1,000 until police dragged him away, was charged with inciting a riot, and posted $5,000 bail. He was now more aggressively political, intolerant, and self-destructive; his third arrest since his return from Russia came on September 14, when he was charged with violating the Sedition Act
Sedition Act of 1918
The Sedition Act of 1918 was an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader 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...
and freed on $5,000 bail. This was a day after possibly the largest demonstration for Bolshevik Russia held in the United States (in The Bronx
The Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
), when Reed passionately defended the revolution, which he seemed to think was coming to America as well. He tried to prevent Allied intervention
Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War
The Allied intervention was a multi-national military expedition launched in 1918 during World War I which continued into the Russian Civil War. Its operations included forces from 14 nations and were conducted over a vast territory...
, arguing that the Russians were contributing to the war effort by checking German ambitions in the Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and Japanese designs on Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
, but this came to naught.
On February 21-22, 1919, Bryant was fiercely grilled before a Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
committee exploring Bolshevik propaganda activities in the US, but emerged resilient; Reed followed on the 22nd, delivering quick, subtle testimony which was, however, savagely distorted by the press. Later that day he went to Philadelphia to stand trial for his May speech; despite a hostile judge, press, and patriotic speech by the prosecutor, Reed's lawyer convinced the jury the case was about free speech, and he was acquitted. Returning to New York, Reed continued speaking widely and participating in the various twists of socialist politics that year. He served as editor of The New York Communist, the weekly newspaper issued by the Left Wing Section
Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party
The Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party was an organized faction within the Socialist Party of America in 1919 which served as the core of the dual communist parties which emerged in the fall of that year — the Communist Party of America and the Communist Labor Party of America.-Precusors:A...
of Greater New York.
Affiliated with the Left Wing of the Socialist Party
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
, Reed with the other radicals was expelled from the National Socialist Convention in Chicago on August 30, 1919. The radicals then split into two bitterly hostile groups, forming the Communist Labor Party
Communist Labor Party
The Communist Labor Party of America was one of the organizational predecessors of the Communist Party USA. The group was established at the end of August 1919 following a three-way split of the Socialist Party of America...
(Reed's, in the creation of which he had been indispensable) and, the next day, the Communist Party of America. Reed was the international delegate of the former, wrote its manifesto and platform, edited its paper, The Voice of Labor, and was denounced as "Jack the Liar" in the Communist Party organ, The Communist. Reed's writings from 1919 display doubts about Western-style democracy and defend the dictatorship of the proletariat
Dictatorship of the proletariat
In Marxist socio-political thought, the dictatorship of the proletariat refers to a socialist state in which the proletariat, or the working class, have control of political power. The term, coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the...
, which he saw as a necessary step that would prefigure the true democracy "based upon equality and the liberty of the individual."
Comintern functionary
Indicted for seditionSedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
and hoping to secure Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
backing for the CLP, he fled from America in early October on board a Scandinavian frigate by means of a forged passport, working his way to Bergen
Bergen
Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with a population of as of , . Bergen is the administrative centre of Hordaland county. Greater Bergen or Bergen Metropolitan Area as defined by Statistics Norway, has a population of as of , ....
as a stoker. Given shore leave, he disappeared to Kristiania
Oslo
Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...
, crossed into Sweden on October 22, passed through Finland and made his way to Moscow by train. In the cold winter of 1919-1920, he traveled in the region around Moscow, observing factories, communes, and villages; filling notebooks; and carrying on an affair with a Russian woman. His feelings about the revolution were now ambiguous: on the one hand, he told Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century....
, who had recently arrived aboard Buford and especially complained about the Cheka
Cheka
Cheka was the first of a succession of Soviet state security organizations. It was created by a decree issued on December 20, 1917, by Vladimir Lenin and subsequently led by aristocrat-turned-communist Felix Dzerzhinsky...
, that the enemies of the revolution deserved their fate. However, he suggested that she see Angelica Balabanoff
Angelica Balabanoff
Angelica Balabanoff was a Jewish-Italian communist and social democratic activist.-Revolutionary activities:...
, a critic of the current situation, indicating he wanted Goldman to hear the other side.
Reed, although facing the threat of arrest in Illinois, tried to return home after February 1920. At that time, the Soviets organized a convention to establish a United Communist Party of America. Reed attempted to leave Russia through Latvia that month, but his train never arrived forcing him to hitch a ride in the boxcar of an eastbound military train to Petrograd. In March, he crossed into Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
, where he had radical friends, including a future politician and SDKL
Finnish People's Democratic League
Finnish People's Democratic League was a Finnish political organisation with the aim of uniting those left of the Finnish Social Democratic Party...
member of parliament
Parliament of Finland
The Eduskunta , is the parliament of Finland. The unicameral parliament has 200 members and meets in the Parliament House in Helsinki. The latest election to the parliament took place on April 17, 2011.- Constitution :...
Hella Wuolijoki
Hella Wuolijoki
Hella Wuolijoki was a Finnish writer of Estonian origin, known for her Niskavuori series.-Life & career:Wuolijoki was born in Helme, Estonia....
, and, with their help, was hidden in the hold of a freighter. On the 13th, customs officials finally found him in a coal bunker. He was taken to the police station, where he maintained that he was the seaman "Jim Gormley". Eventually, the jewels, photographs, letters, and fake documents he had in his possession forced him to reveal his true identity. Although beaten several times and threatened with torture, he refused, however, to surrender the names of his local contacts. As a result of his silence, he was not able to be tried for treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
, and was instead convicted of smuggling and having jewels in his possession (102 small diamonds worth $14,000, which were confiscated).
The US Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State
The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in line of succession and order of precedence...
was satisfied with Reed's arrest and pressured the Finns for his papers. American authorities, however, remained indifferent to Reed's fate. Although Reed paid the fine for smuggling, he was still detained illegally, and his physical condition and state of mind deteriorated rapidly. He suffered from depression
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
and insomnia
Insomnia
Insomnia is most often defined by an individual's report of sleeping difficulties. While the term is sometimes used in sleep literature to describe a disorder demonstrated by polysomnographic evidence of disturbed sleep, insomnia is often defined as a positive response to either of two questions:...
, wrote alarming letters to Bryant, and threatened a hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
on May 18. He was finally released in early June, and sailed for Tallinn
Tallinn
Tallinn is the capital and largest city of Estonia. It occupies an area of with a population of 414,940. It is situated on the northern coast of the country, on the banks of the Gulf of Finland, south of Helsinki, east of Stockholm and west of Saint Petersburg. Tallinn's Old Town is in the list...
, Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
, on the 5th. Two days later, he traveled to Petrograd, recuperating from malnutrition and scurvy
Scurvy
Scurvy is a disease resulting from a deficiency of vitamin C, which is required for the synthesis of collagen in humans. The chemical name for vitamin C, ascorbic acid, is derived from the Latin name of scurvy, scorbutus, which also provides the adjective scorbutic...
caused by having been fed dried fish almost exclusively, but his spirits were high.
At the end of June, he traveled to Moscow and, after discussing with Bryant the possibility of her joining him, she gained passage on a Swedish tramp steamer and arrived in Gothenburg
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
on August 10. At the same time, Reed attended the second Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
congress. Although his mood was as jovial and boisterous as ever, his physical appearance had deteriorated; he was quite thin, seemed weak and was sallow and his face lined.
During this congress, he bitterly objected to the deference other revolutionaries showed to the Russians, who assumed the tide of revolutionary fervor was ebbing, making it necessary for the Communist party to work within the existing institutions – a policy Reed felt would be disastrous. He was contemptuous of the bully
Bully
Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior manifested by the use of force or coercion to affect others, particularly when the behavior is habitual and involves an imbalance of power...
ing tactics displayed during the congress by Karl Radek
Karl Radek
Karl Bernhardovic Radek was a socialist active in the Polish and German movements before World War I and an international Communist leader after the Russian Revolution....
and Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Zinoviev
Grigory Yevseevich Zinoviev , born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky Apfelbaum , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a Soviet Communist politician...
, who ordered Reed to attend the Congress of the Peoples of the East
Congress of the Peoples of the East
The Congress of the Peoples of the East was held in Baku in September 1920. The congress was first planned by Mirsäyet Soltanğäliev and the National Communists. However Stalin prevented Soltanğäliev from attending the congress, fearing that he would help consolidate his wing of the communist...
to be held at Baku
Baku
Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...
on August 15.
It was a long journey, five days by train through countryside devastated by civil war and infected by typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
. Reed was reluctant to go and asked to arrive later, as he had planned to go first to Petrograd, where Bryant was arriving from Murmansk
Murmansk
Murmansk is a city and the administrative center of Murmansk Oblast, Russia. It serves as a seaport and is located in the extreme northwest part of Russia, on the Kola Bay, from the Barents Sea on the northern shore of the Kola Peninsula, not far from Russia's borders with Norway and Finland...
. Zinoviev insisted Reed take the official train: "the Comintern has made a decision. Obey." Reed would normally have rebelled at being spoken to with such contempt, but he needed Soviet good-will at the moment and was not prepared for a final break with the Comintern, so he made the trip with great reluctance. Reed's actions and feelings during this time are a matter of speculation, but years after abandoning Communism, his friend Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin Gitlow
Benjamin "Ben" Gitlow was a prominent American socialist politician of the early twentieth century and a founding member of the Communist Party USA. From the end of the 1930s, Gitlow turned to conservatism and wrote two sensational exposés of American Communism, books which were very influential...
asserted that the treatment Reed received from Zinoviev filled Reed with bitter disillusionment for the Communist movement.
During his time in Baku, Reed received a telegram announcing Bryant's arrival in Moscow. He followed her there, arriving on September 15, and was able to tell her of the events of the preceding eight months. He appeared older and his clothes were in tatters. While in Moscow, he took her to meet Lenin, Trotsky, Lev Kamenev
Lev Kamenev
Lev Borisovich Kamenev , born Rozenfeld , was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was briefly head of state of the new republic in 1917, and from 1923-24 the acting Premier in the last year of Lenin's life....
, and other leading Bolsheviks and also to visit Moscow's ballet and art galleries.
Death and legacy
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
, he was hospitalized five days later and was found to have spotted typhus
Scrub typhus
Scrub typhus or Bush typhus is a form of typhus caused by Orientia tsutsugamushi first isolated and identified in 1930 in Japan., accessdate: 16 October 2011...
. Bryant spent all her time with him, but there were no medicines to be obtained because of the Allied blockade
Blockade
A blockade is an effort to cut off food, supplies, war material or communications from a particular area by force, either in part or totally. A blockade should not be confused with an embargo or sanctions, which are legal barriers to trade, and is distinct from a siege in that a blockade is usually...
. His mind started to wander, and then he lost the use of the right side of his body and could no longer speak. His wife was holding his hand when he died in Moscow on October 17, 1920. After a hero's funeral, his body was buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis
Kremlin Wall Necropolis
Burials in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow began in November 1917, when 240 pro-Bolshevik victims of the October Revolution were buried in mass graves on Red Square. It is centered on both sides of Lenin's Mausoleum, initially built in wood in 1924 and rebuilt in granite in 1929–1930...
.
The uses of John Reed as a symbol in popular culture have been varied. Some have dismissed him as a "romantic revolutionary" and a "playboy" – a vapid dilettante pretending to profess revolutionary sensibilities. For the Communist movement to which he belonged, Reed became a symbol of the international nature of the Bolshevik revolution, a martyr buried at the Kremlin wall amidst solemn fanfare, his name to be uttered reverently as a member of the radical pantheon. Others, such as his old friend and comrade Benjamin Gitlow, made the claim that Reed had begun to shun the bureaucracy and violence of Soviet Communism late in his life and have thus sought to posthumously enlist Reed in their own anti-communist
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
cause.
John Reed has also been an influence upon the cinema. Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
's influential 1927 silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
October: Ten Days That Shook the World was based on Reed's book.
Half a century later, Warren Beatty made the 1981 film Reds, based on the life of John Reed. Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty born March 30, 1937) is an American actor, producer, screenwriter and director. He has received a total of fourteen Academy Award nominations, winning one for Best Director in 1982. He has also won four Golden Globe Awards including the Cecil B. DeMille Award.-Early life and...
starred as Reed, while Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton
Diane Keaton is an American film actress, director, producer, and screenwriter. Keaton began her career on stage, and made her screen debut in 1970...
played the part of Louise Bryant and Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
that of Eugene O'Neill. The movie won three Academy Awards, and was nominated for nine others. Other film portrayals of Reed include the 1982 two-part Soviet production Red Bells, starring Franco Nero
Franco Nero
Franco Nero is an Italian actor.-Early life:Nero was born Francesco Sparanero in San Prospero Parmense , the son of a sergeant in the...
, and the 1973 film Reed: Mexico Insurgente, based on his accounts of the Mexican Revolution, directed by Paul Leduc.
A persistent urban legend
Urban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
exists that John Reed came from the family for which Reed College
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...
, an elite liberal arts
Liberal arts
The term liberal arts refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy...
school located in Portland, Oregon, was named. Despite the college's reputation for leftist politics, there is no truth to this rumor. The College was named for Simeon Reed by his widow Amanda Reed who donated a significant part of her inherited fortune to establish the college in 1911.
Further reading
- Granville Hicks with John Stuart, John Reed: The Making of a Revolutionary. New York: Macmillan, 1936.
- Eric Hornberger, John Reed: Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.
- Eric Hornberger and John Biggart (eds.), John Reed and the Russian Revolution: Uncollected Articles, Letters and Speeches on Russia, 1917-1920. Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 1992.
- Robert A. Rosenstone, Romantic Revolutionary: A biography of John Reed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
- Lincoln Steffens, John Reed: Under the Kremlin. Foreword by Clarence Darrow. Chicago: Walden Book Shop, 1922.
- John NewsingerJohn NewsingerJohn Newsinger is a British professor of History at Bath Spa University.A book reviewer for the New Left Review he is also author of numerous books and articles, as well as studies of science fiction and of the cinema...
(ed.) Shaking the World: John Reed's Revolutionary Journalism London, England: Bookmarks, 1998.
External links
- The John Reed Internet Archive on Marxists.org
- The Last Days With John Reed by Louise BryantLouise BryantLouise Bryant was an American journalist and writer. She was best known for her Marxist and anarchist beliefs and her essays on radical political and feminist themes. Bryant published articles in several radical left journals during her life, including Alexander Berkman's The Blast...