The Mysterious Life of John Reed. John Reed. Who lies at the Kremlin wall? last years of life

Reed John (1887-1920). American writer, journalist. One of the organizers of the US Communist Party (1919).

Member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. Reed was born in Portland (USA) into the family of a wealthy businessman. After graduating from Harvard University, he became an employee of leading American newspapers. In 1913 he participated in the bourgeois-democratic revolution in Mexico. In the book Revolutionary Mexico, he opposed US interference in the internal affairs of this country. In the fall of 1917 he came to Russia. Participant of the October Revolution in Petrograd. Returning to his homeland, Reed made about twenty campaign trips around the country, speaking in defense of the October Revolution. In the fall of 1919, the “frantic reporter” again came to Petrograd and participated in the work of the Second Congress of the Communist International. The chronicler of October traveled around Russia, collecting material for his new book. Died in Moscow from typhus. He was buried on Red Square near the Kremlin wall. He was married to the American writer Louise Bryant-Trullinger (1890-1936).

Reed is the author of one of the best historical and memoir works about the October Revolution, “Ten Days that Shook the World” (Reed J. Ten Days that Shook the World. New York, 1919). In his “documentarily accurate and truthful narrative,” the American journalist quite objectively reflected the true role of almost each of the leading participants in the events of 1917. As you know, Lenin highly appreciated the book of the American communist journalist and even wrote a preface to it. He recommended publishing it in millions of copies in all languages ​​of the planet. A Russian translation of Reed's book appeared on bookshelves in 1923, and Stalin immediately disliked it. The fact is that the book does not mention the name of Stalin among the leaders of the uprising. The book was criticized and later buried in special funds. For more than a quarter of a century it was forgotten; reprinting was carried out only four years after Stalin's death, in 1957.

The first American city in which the first workers refused to load military supplies for Kolchak’s army was the city of Portland on the Pacific coast. In this city, October 22, 1887, John Reed was born.

His father was one of the tough, straightforward pioneers that Jack London portrayed in his stories of the American West. He was a man of keen intelligence who hated hypocrisy and pretense. Instead of holding the hand of powerful and wealthy men, he opposed them, and when the trusts, like giant octopuses, seized the forests and other natural resources of the state into their clutches, he waged a bitter struggle against them. He was persecuted, beaten, and fired from service. But he never capitulated to his enemies.

Thus, from his father John Reed received a good inheritance - the blood of a fighter, a first-class mind, a brave and courageous spirit. His brilliant talents manifested themselves early, and after graduating from high school he was sent to study at the most famous university in America - Harvard. Oil kings, coal barons and steel magnates usually sent their sons here. They knew very well that their sons, having spent four years in sports, in luxury and in the “dispassionate study of dispassionate science,” would return with souls absolutely free from the slightest touch of radicalism. In this way, in colleges and universities, tens of thousands of American youths are turning into defenders of the existing order - into the white guard of reaction.

John Reed spent four years at Harvard, where he became a universal favorite thanks to his personal charm and talents. He encountered daily the young scions of the rich and privileged classes. He listened to pompous lectures from orthodox sociology teachers. He listened to the sermons of the high priests of capitalism - professors of political economy. And he ended up organizing the Socialist Club in the very center of this stronghold of plutocracy. It was a blow right in the face of the learned ignoramuses. His superiors consoled themselves with the thought that this was just a boyish whim. “This radicalism will go away,” they said, “as soon as he leaves the college gates and enters the wide arena of life.”

John Reed completed the course of science, received an academic degree, went out into the wide world and conquered it in an incredibly short time. He conquered me with his love for life, his enthusiasm and his pen. While still at university, as editor of a satirical leaflet Lampoon(“Mockery”) he has already shown himself to be a master of an easy and brilliant style. Now a stream of poems, stories, and dramas flowed from his pen. Publishers bombarded him with offers, illustrated magazines began to pay him almost fabulous sums, large newspapers ordered him reviews of the most important events in foreign life.

So he became a wanderer on the highways of the world. Anyone who wanted to keep abreast of modern life had only to follow John Reed, for wherever anything significant happened, he invariably kept up, like a certain petrel.

In Peterson, a strike by textile workers turned into a revolutionary storm - John Reed found himself in the thick of it.

In Colorado, Rockefeller's slaves crawled out of their trenches and refused to return there, despite the clubs and rifles of armed guards - and John Reed was already here at one with the rebels.

In Mexico, enslaved peasants (peons) raised the banner of rebellion and, under the command of Villa, moved to the Capitol - and John Reed on horseback walked next to them.

An account of this last feat appeared in Metropolitan magazine and later in the book Revolutionary Mexico. Reed described in lyrical tones the scarlet and purple mountains and vast deserts, “protected all around by gigantic cacti and Spanish needles.” He was captivated by the vast plains, but even more so by its inhabitants, mercilessly exploited by the landowners and the Catholic Church. He describes how they drive their herds from the mountain meadows, striving to join the liberating armies, how they sing their songs around the camp fires in the evenings and, despite hunger and cold, in rags, barefoot, they fight magnificently for land and freedom.

The imperialist war broke out - and John Reed was everywhere where the guns roared: in France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, the Balkans and even here in Russia. For his exposure of the treachery of tsarist officials and for collecting materials proving their participation in organizing Jewish pogroms, he was arrested by the gendarmes along with the famous artist Boardman Robinson. But, as always, through clever intrigue, a stroke of luck, or a witty trick, he escaped their clutches and, laughing, rushed into the next adventure.

Danger could never deter him. She was his native element. He always made his way into restricted areas, to the front lines of the trenches.

How vividly my trip with John Reed and Boris Reinstein to the Riga front in September 1917 comes back to me! Our car was heading south, towards Wenden, when German artillery began to bombard the village on the eastern side with grenades. And this village suddenly became the most interesting place in the world for John Reed! He insisted that we go there. We carefully crawled forward, when suddenly a huge shell exploded behind us, and the section of the road that we had just passed flew into the air in a black fountain of smoke and dust.

In fright, we clutched each other convulsively, but a minute later John Reed was already beaming with delight. Apparently, some inner need of his nature was satisfied.

So he wandered around the world, in all countries, on all fronts, moving from one extraordinary adventure to another. But he was not just an adventurer, a traveler-journalist, a spectator from the outside, calmly observing the torment of people. On the contrary, their suffering was his suffering. All this chaos, dirt, torment and bloodshed offended his sense of justice and decency. He persistently sought to get to the roots of all these evils in order to then uproot them.

And so he returned from his wanderings to New York, but not for vacation, but for new work and agitation.

Returning from Mexico, he announced: “Yes, there is rebellion and chaos in Mexico, but the responsibility for all this falls not on landless peons, but on those who sow trouble by sending gold and weapons, i.e. on American and British oil companies competing with each other."

He returned from Peterson to organize a grandiose dramatic performance in a huge hall in New York, in Madison Square Gardens, called “The Battle of the Peterson Proletariat with Capital.”

He returned from Colorado with a story about the massacre in Ludlo, which partly eclipsed the Lena massacre in Siberia in its horrors. He told how miners were thrown out of their homes, how they lived in tents, how these tents were doused with kerosene and set on fire, how fleeing workers were shot by soldiers - and how two dozen women and children died in the flames. Addressing Rockefeller, the king of millionaires, he said: “These are your mines, these are your hired bandits and soldiers. You are murderers!

And he returned from the battlefield not with empty chatter about the atrocities of one or another belligerent side, but with curses on the war itself as one continuous atrocity, as a bloodbath organized by imperialisms warring against each other. In Liberator (Liberator), a radical revolutionary magazine to which he donated his best writings, he published a fiercely anti-militarist article under the slogan “Get a straitjacket for your soldier son.” Together with other editors, he was brought to trial in New York for treason. The prosecutor tried his best to get a guilty verdict from a patriotic jury; he even went so far as to place an orchestra near the courthouse that played national anthems throughout the trial! But Reed and his comrades firmly defended their beliefs. When Reed courageously declared that he considered it his duty to fight for social revolution under the revolutionary banner, the prosecutor asked him a question:

“But in the current war, would you fight under the American flag?”

“Why not?”

In response, Reed gave an impassioned speech in which he outlined the horrors he had witnessed on the battlefield. The description turned out to be so vivid and powerful that even some of the prejudiced petty-bourgeois jurors were moved to tears and the editors were acquitted.

Just as America entered the war, it so happened that Reed underwent surgery, as a result of which he lost one of his kidneys. Doctors declared him unfit for military service.

“The loss of a kidney may free me from service in a war between two nations,” he declared, “but it does not free me from serving in a war between classes.”

In the summer of 1917, John Reed hurried to Russia, where in the first revolutionary skirmishes he recognized the approach of a great class war.

Having quickly analyzed the situation, he realized that the conquest of power by the proletariat was logical and inevitable. But he is worried about delays and delays. Every morning he woke up and, with a feeling similar to irritation, was convinced that the revolution had not yet begun. Finally, Smolny gave the signal and the masses moved into the revolutionary struggle. It is quite natural that John Reed went forward with them. He was omnipresent: during the dissolution of the Pre-Parliament, during the construction of barricades, during the ovation for Lenin and Zinoviev when they came out of hiding, during the fall of the Winter Palace...

But he talked about all this in his book.

He collected material from everywhere, moving from place to place. He collected complete sets of Pravda, Izvestia, all proclamations, brochures, posters and posters. He had a special passion for posters. Every time a new poster appeared, he didn't think twice about tearing it off the wall if he couldn't get it any other way.

In those days, posters were printed in such numbers and with such speed that it was difficult to find a place for them on fences. Cadet, social-revolutionary, Menshevik, left-wing Social Revolutionary and Bolshevik posters were pasted on top of each other in such thick layers that Reed once tore off a layer of sixteen posters, one under the other. Rushing into my room and waving a huge paper slab, he exclaimed: “Look! In one fell swoop I grabbed the entire revolution and counter-revolution!”

Thus, in various ways he collected a magnificent collection of materials. They were so good that when he arrived in New York Harbor after 1918, agents of the American Attorney General took them away from him. He managed, however, to regain possession of them and hide them in a New York room, where, amid the roar of underground and elevated trains running above his head and under his feet, he wrote “Ten Days That Shook the World” on his typewriter.

Of course, the American fascists did not want this book to reach the public. They broke into the publishing house six times, trying to steal the manuscript. On his photograph, John Reed wrote: “To my publisher, Horace Liveright, who nearly went bankrupt printing this book.”

This book was not the only fruit of his literary activity related to his propaganda of the truth about Russia. Of course, the bourgeoisie did not want to know this truth. Hating and fearing the Russian revolution, the bourgeoisie tried to drown it in a stream of lies. Endless streams of dirty slander poured out from political platforms, from cinema screens, from the columns of newspapers and magazines. The magazines that had once begged Reed for articles now wouldn't print a single line he'd written. But they were not able to shut his mouth. He spoke at crowded mass meetings.

He created his own magazine. He became the editor of the left-socialist magazine Revolutionary Century, and then of Kommunist. He wrote article after article for the Liberator. He traveled around America, participating in conferences, filling everyone around with facts, infecting everyone with enthusiasm and revolutionary fervor, and finally, he organized the Communist Workers Party in the center of American capitalism - just as ten years earlier he organized the Socialist Club in the heart of Harvard University.

The “wise men” missed the mark as usual. John Reed's radicalism turned out to be anything but a "passing whim." Contrary to prophecies, contact with the outside world did not heal Reed. It only strengthened and strengthened his radicalism. How deep and strong this radicalism now was, the bourgeoisie could see from reading the Voice of Labor, the new communist organ, of which Reed was the editor. The American bourgeoisie now realized that a true revolutionary had finally appeared in its fatherland. Now this one word “revolutionary” puts her in awe! It is true that in the distant past there were revolutionaries in America, and even now there are societies there that enjoy high honor and respect, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Sons of the American Revolution. With this, the reactionary bourgeoisie pays tribute to the memory of the revolution of 1776. But those revolutionaries have long since departed to another world. And John Reed was a living revolutionary, extraordinarily lively, he was a challenge, he was a scourge for the bourgeoisie!

Now she had only one thing left to do - keep Reed under lock and key. And so he is arrested - not once, not twice, but twenty times. In Philadelphia, the police locked the meeting hall, preventing him from speaking. But he climbed onto a soap box and from this pulpit addressed a huge crowd that blocked the street. The rally was such a success, and there were so many sympathizers in it, that when Reed was arrested for “disturbing the peace,” the jury could not get a guilty verdict. No American city is at peace until it arrests John Reed at least once. But he always manages to be released on bail or obtain a postponement of the trial, and he immediately rushes to give battle in some new arena.

The Western bourgeoisie has become in the habit of attributing all their disasters and failures to the Russian revolution. One of the worst crimes of this revolution was that it turned this gifted young American into an ardent fanatic of the revolution. This is what the bourgeoisie thinks. In reality this is not entirely true.

It was not Russia that turned John Reed into a revolutionary. Revolutionary American blood flowed in his veins from the day he was born. Yes, although Americans are constantly portrayed as an obese, complacent and reactionary nation, they still have resentment and rebellion running through their veins. Think of the great rebels of the past - Thomas, Pan, Walt Whitman, John Brown and Parsons. And John Reed's current comrades and associates are Bill Gaywood, Robert Minor, Rutenberg and Foster! Remember the industrial bloodshed at Homestead, Pullman in Lawrence, and the struggles of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). All of them - both these leaders and these masses - are purely American in origin. And although this is not entirely obvious at the moment, there is a thick admixture of rebellion in the blood of Americans.

Therefore, it cannot be said that Russia turned John Reed into a revolutionary. But she made him scientifically minded and consistent revolutionary. This is her great merit. She made him litter his desk with books by Marx, Engels and Lenin. She gave him an understanding of the historical process and the course of events. She forced him to replace his somewhat vague humanitarian views with the hard, brutal facts of economics. And she encouraged him to become a teacher of the American labor movement and try to lay under it the same scientific foundation that he laid under his own beliefs.

“But politics is not your strength, John!” - his friends used to say to Reed. “You are an artist, not a propagandist. You must devote your talents to creative literary work!” He often experienced the truth of these words, for new poems, novels and dramas were constantly emerging in his head, they were constantly looking for expression, striving to take on certain forms. And when friends insisted that he put aside revolutionary propaganda and sit down at his desk, he responded with a smile: “Okay, I’ll do it now.”

But he never stopped his revolutionary activities for a minute. He just couldn't do it! The Russian Revolution captured him completely and completely. She made him her adept, forced him to subject his wavering anarchist sentiments to the strict discipline of communism; she sent him, like a certain prophet with a flaming torch, to the cities of America; she summoned him to Moscow in 1919 to work for the Communist International on the merger of the two US Communist parties.

Armed with new facts of revolutionary theory, he again embarked on an underground journey to New York. Handed over by a sailor and removed from the ship, he was thrown alone into a Finnish prison. From there he returned to Russia again, wrote in the Communist International, collected materials for a new book, and was a delegate to the Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku. Having fallen ill with typhus (probably contracted in the Caucasus) and exhausted by excessive work, he could not resist the disease and died on Sunday, October 17, 1920.

Like John Reed, there were other fighters who fought the counter-revolutionary front in America and Europe as valiantly as the Red Army fought the counter-revolution in the USSR. Some fell victim to pogroms, others fell silent forever in prison. One died in the White Sea during a storm on the way back to France. Another fell to his death in San Francisco from an airplane from which he was distributing proclamations protesting the intervention. No matter how fierce the onslaught of imperialism on the revolution was, it could have been even fiercer if not for these fighters. They also did something to hold back the pressure of the counter-revolution. Not only Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars and Caucasians helped the Russian revolution, but, although to a lesser extent, also the French, Germans, British and Americans. Among these “non-Russian figures,” the figure of John Reed stands in the foreground, for he was a man of exceptional talents, struck down in the full bloom of his powers...

When the news of his death came from Helsingfors and Revel, we were convinced that this was just another lie, one of those that are fabricated every day in counter-revolutionary lie factories. But when Louise Bryant confirmed this amazing news, no matter how painful it was for us, we had to give up hope of its refutation.

Although John Reed died as an exile and a five-year prison sentence hung over his head at that time, even the bourgeois press paid tribute to him as an artist and a person. The hearts of the bourgeois felt great relief: there was no longer John Reed, who was so able to expose their deceit and hypocrisy, and so mercilessly scourged them with his pen!

The radical world of America has suffered an irreparable loss. For comrades living outside America, it is very difficult to measure the sense of loss caused by his death. Russians consider it quite natural, something taken for granted, that a person should die for his convictions. There is no sentimentality in this area. Here, in Soviet Russia, thousands and tens of thousands died for socialism. But in America comparatively few such sacrifices were made. If anything, John Reed was the first martyr of the communist revolution, the forerunner of thousands to come. The sudden end of his truly meteor-like life in distant, blockaded Russia was a terrible blow for the American communists.

Only one consolation remained for his old friends and comrades: it lies in the fact that John Reed lies in the only place in the whole world where he wanted to lie - on the square near the Kremlin wall.

Here, over his grave, a monument was erected, in keeping with his character, in the form of an unhewn granite block on which the words were carved:

"John Reed, delegate to the Third International, 1920."

Translation from English by S.G. Zaimovsky

Childhood. Studying at college and university

John Reed was born on October 22, 1887, at his maternal grandmother's mansion in Portland, Oregon. His mother, Margaret Greene Reed, was the daughter of a wealthy Portland entrepreneur who became wealthy with the first gas plant in Oregon, the first iron plant on the West Coast, and Portland's waterworks. His father, Charles Jerome Reed, was a sales representative for a large agricultural machinery company. His father quickly gained recognition in Portland business circles. John's parents married in 1886.

John's childhood was spent surrounded by sisters and servants, and all his friends and friends were offspring of the upper class. John's brother, Harry, was 2 years younger than him. Jack and his brother were sent to the newly founded Portland Academy, a private school. John was talented and smart enough to pass exams in the subjects taught there, but he was bored and uninterested in studying for good grades, since he believed that teaching at school was dry and boring. In September 1904, John was sent to Morristown School in New Jersey to prepare for college because his father, who had never attended college, wanted his sons to attend Harvard.

John's first attempt to enter the university failed, but he entered the second, and in the fall of 1906 he began his studies at Harvard. Tall, handsome, cheerful, John took part in almost all student activities. He was a member of the cheerleading team, a member of the swim team, and participated in Drama Club meetings. He was a member of the editorial board of the student magazine Lampoon And Harvard Monthly, and also served as president of the Harvard student choir. John was not a member of the varsity football team, but excelled in less prestigious sports such as swimming and water polo.

Reed also took part in meetings of the Socialist Club, where his friend Walter Lippmann was president. Although Reed never became a member of this club, these meetings had a definite influence on his views. The club was absolutely legal, and constantly criticized the university leadership for not paying all university employees a living wage and petitioning for the creation of a course on socialism.

Reed graduated from Harvard in 1910 and began his travels that same summer. During his travels he visited England, France and Spain.

The beginning of a reporting career

John Reed wanted to become a journalist, and decided that the most suitable place for a reporting career was New York, where all the most important publications of that time were concentrated. Thanks to his university acquaintance with journalist Lincoln Steffens, who was engaged in journalistic revelations and who highly valued John for his intelligence and talent, it was easier to take the first step. Steffens helped Reed take a not very significant post at American Magazine - John's responsibilities included reading manuscripts, proofreading, and then editorial work. To earn more money, John took over the management position of the newly launched, quarterly magazine Landscape Architecture.

John settled in Greenwich Village, a newly emerging and thriving neighborhood of artists and poets. John Reed fell in love with New York, constantly exploring it and writing poetry about it. The magazines he worked for paid him regularly, but these were the earnings of a “freelance artist,” and John wanted to achieve some stability. For six months, John tried to publish his stories and essays about his six-month stay in Europe, receiving refusal everywhere. And yet he achieved success - the Saturday Evening Post newspaper agreed to publish his works. During the same year, Reed was featured in magazines Collier's, The Forum, And The Century Magazine. One of his poems was set to music by composer Arthur Foote, and the magazine The American offered him a position on the staff and began publishing it. John Reed's career was taking off.

His interest in social issues was sparked by his acquaintance with Steffens and Ida Tarbell. But quickly enough, John took a much more radical position than the one they adhered to. In 1913, John became a member of the magazine staff The Masses, where Max Eastman was the editor-in-chief and assisted by his sister Crystal. In this publication, John published more than 50 articles and reviews.

One of the main topics that interested him was revolution. He was first arrested at age 26 while participating in a labor strike in Patterson. The brutal suppression of workers' protests, as well as the short-term arrest that followed, made Reed's views even more radical. At this time, John became close to the syndicalist union "Industrial Workers of the World". John expressed his position and opinion about what happened in the article "War in Patterson", which was published in June.

In the fall of 1913, John was sent by the magazine Metropolitan Magazine to Mexico to report on the Mexican Revolution. John was stationed at Pancho Villa's camp for four months, and together with Villa served as a representative of the Constitutional Forces after their victory over the Federal forces at Torreon. This victory opened the way to Mexico City. During these 4 months, Reed published a series of reports on the Mexican Revolution, which established his reputation as a war journalist. John Reed deeply sympathized with the plight of the rebels and was strongly opposed to American intervention (which began shortly after he left Mexico). John warmly supported Villa, but Venustiano Carranza was indifferent to him. These Mexican reports were later republished in a book called "Mexico Rising", which was published in 1914.

On April 30, 1914, John arrived in Colorado, where the Ludlow Massacre had recently occurred. He stayed there for a little over a week, researching what happened, speaking at rallies on behalf of the miners, writing a vivid article “The Colorado War” and came to the conclusion that the class conflict in society was much more serious than he previously thought. John spent the summer of 1914 in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with Mabel Dodge and her son, where they prepared Mexico Risen for publication and interviewed President Wilson on the Mexican Revolution.

War correspondent

Almost immediately after the outbreak of the First World War, John Reed, as a Metropolitan reporter, went to neutral (at that moment) Italy. Reed met his mistress, Mabel Dodge, and together they went to Paris. Reed believed that the war was just a new round of trade struggle between the imperialists. John did not sympathize with any of the participants in the war. In an unsigned article, "The Traders' War", which was published in The Masses in September 1914, John wrote:

"The real war, for which this outbreak of death and destruction is just an incident, began a long time ago. The war went on for decades, but we did not notice the battles of this war. This is a war of merchants."

“What is democracy doing in alliance with Tsar Nicholas? Was there liberalism in the dispersal of Gapon’s demonstrations, in the Odessa pogroms?...

“We socialists must hope, no, believe that because of these terrible bloodshed and terrible destruction, global social changes will occur, and we will move one step closer to our dream - Peace among People.”

"This is not Our war."

In France, John Reed was in apathy due to the censorship introduced during the war, and also because it was very difficult for him to get to the front. Reed and Mabel went to London, from where Mabel went to New York to help John from there. John spent the rest of 1914 in exile with the leader of the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa, where he wrote his book “Mexico Risen.”

Revolution in Russia

During the First World War he worked as a correspondent in Europe. In August 1917 he arrived in Petrograd, where he took part in the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917. Later he wrote a book about these events in Russia - “Ten Days That Shook the World”, about which V. I. Lenin responded as follows:

Having read with the greatest interest and unflagging attention John Reed’s book: “Ten Days That Shook the World,” I wholeheartedly recommend this work to workers of all countries. I would like to see this book distributed in millions of copies and translated into all languages, since it gives a truthful and unusually vividly written account of events that are so important for understanding what the proletarian revolution is, what the dictatorship of the proletariat is.

Became one of the founders of the Communist Party of the USA; as its representative participated in the First Congress of the Comintern in 1919.

Died in Moscow from typhus. He was buried on Red Square near the Kremlin wall.

One of the streets in Serpukhov, in Astrakhan, as well as a street in the Nevsky district of St. Petersburg, is named after John Reed.

Addresses in Petrograd

• 1917-1918 - Troitskaya street, 23, apt. 36.

Addresses in Moscow

• Gagarinsky Lane, 11 (former house of architect N. G. Faleev).

Family

In 1917 he married Louise Bryant. There were no children in the marriage. Louise attended the funeral of John Reed in Moscow. In 1924, Louise married the famous anti-communist W. Bullitt - the public was shocked not so much by the sharp change in her views, but by the fact that her daughter was born just 3 months after this marriage.

Works

• Reed J. Selected works [Text]: trans. from English / J. Reed. - M.: foreign lit. publishing house, 1957. - 254 p.
• Reed J. Favorites: in 2 books: book 1. Ten days that shocked the world; Rising Mexico [Text]: trans. from English / J. Reed. - M.: Politizdat, 1987. - 543 p.
• Reed, John. 10 days that shocked the world. With forewords by V.I. Lenin and N.K. Krupskaya. - M.: State. political publishing house Literary, 1957. - 352 p.
• Reed J. Favorites: in 2 books: book 2. Essays. Articles. Poems. Autobiography. Letters. Memories of John Reed [Text]: trans. from English / J. Reed. - M.: Politizdat, 1987. - 527 p.

Screen adaptations and dramatizations

• Based on the books and biography of John Reed, director Sergei Bondarchuk made the duology “Red Bells”. Film series: “Mosfilm” (USSR), “Canocite-2” (Mexico), “Vides International” (Italy), Franco Nero in the role of John Reed:
• Based on the book by D. Reed, the first post-Stalin film about the October Revolution was shot, In the Days of October, 1958, where he (performed by actor A. Fedorinov) is one of the characters.
• In 1927, Sergei Eisenstein released the first silent film adaptation (the title was “Ten Days That Shook the World”; the film was released under the title “October.”)

• John Reed's biography formed the basis for Warren Beatty's film Reds.

John Silas Reed, journalist and author of Ten Days That Shook the World. It was his version of the October events that gave the highest assessment: “I wholeheartedly recommend this work to the workers of all countries.” Vladimir Ilyich wanted the book to be translated into all languages ​​and published in millions of copies. I did not agree with this assessment, since John Reed, in contrast, often mentions it. But he did not dare to shoot the book, which had received the blessing of Ilyich himself; it was only sent into exile, hidden in the farthest corner - the Turukhansky region - of the library cabinet. Therefore, it was not easy to read it then.

An American was buried near the Kremlin wall. On the memorial plaque, his name stands next to the name of Inessa Armand (both died in 1920), to whom Lenin was so partial.

And this fact suggests that the old Bolshevik guard considered Reed one of their own. In Soviet times, it was forbidden to say anything other than that he was a convinced socialist and internationalist (Reed was a member of the Comintern executive committee), but later additional information appeared. And that’s good, it’s always useful to know a little more canonical texts.

John Reed was from a wealthy family, studied at Harvard, and even then participated (quite legally) in the work of the socialist club. And later, having started a journalistic career, he worked in publications that were very different in their orientation. In Soviet times, they focused on left-wing newspapers and magazines, carefully emphasizing how step by step John Reed walked towards the correct understanding. Although in fact he collaborated fruitfully with the right. For example, with Metropolitan magazine, which belonged to a partner of the famous tycoon Morgan. This omnivorousness of Reed was usually explained as follows: he collaborated with the right for the sake of earning money, and with the left for the soul.

And John Reed wrote not only about politics, although he was really drawn to the socialists. That’s why they arrested him for the first time during the famous strike in the American Patterson.

But he was no less drawn to sensations, revelations, and generally to those places where it was hot.

So he found himself in the thick of the Mexican revolution, after which the first book that brought him fame, “Mexico Rising,” appeared, where Reed wrote sympathetically about the local rebel Pancho Villa. However, he went to Mexico not so much for ideological reasons (Pancho Villa is not a socialist at all), but because it was hot there. Remember: “How did you end up here? - They shot.” So Reed was always drawn to where they were shooting. In addition, reports from hot spots are always in demand. For the same reason, John Reed later ended up in Europe on.

This is where it’s worth remembering the non-canonical version. According to American economist and historian Anthony Sutton, Reed was a double agent for the Kremlin and Wall Street or an intermediary between them. At first glance, the version is exotic. And one of the critics even called the doctor of sciences and professor a fool. And this, of course, happens. However, the author cites a lot of materials from American archives and has never seen evidence anywhere that these materials are fakes. They argue about the researcher’s conclusions, but the evidence base itself is not touched. And conclusions... everyone can draw their own conclusions. Consequently, Sutton’s version has the right to life.

Judging by Sutton's data, Reed's close connection with large American capital and the White House began during the Mexican Revolution.

The very next day (what amazing speed) Sands - not the last person in the American banking world - writes an urgent request to Frank Polk, who was acting as US Secretary of State at that moment, stating that the journalist is ready to offer the government any information about Russia.

Sands also reports that he intended to personally edit the memo written by Reed, but due to circumstances was unable to do so. And at the end the following comment: "I think the best policy would be... to use such people in formulating our policies... He is not a completely balanced person, but... is susceptible to careful leadership and may well be useful." And in this case, everything ended well for John Reed.

The next document tells about Reed’s arrest in Abo (Finland), where he was detained simultaneously with American, English and German passports. In addition, the journalist illegally carried with him a decent amount of money, diamonds, Soviet and film. And again the same actors intervened: Mr. Sands, Metropolitan magazine and the US State Department.

socialist revolutionaries."

According to the researcher, this is not the case. American monopolists could agree to both a centralized and a centralized Russia, but not to a decentralized free Russia. Anthony Sutton is convinced that decentralization and democracy in Russia did not meet the economic interests of American monopolies. They foresaw the ineffectiveness of the planned socialist economic system, and therefore hoped that they would be able to come to an agreement with the Bolsheviks and gradually subjugate the entire Russian market.

Of course, this was not the official position of the United States, but who and when stopped American tycoons from playing soldiers or world politics?

As for John Reed, Sutton's book raises a question that has yet to be answered. Who really lies at the Kremlin wall: an agent of the Comintern, an agent of Morgan, a double agent? Or was the journalist simply used in the dark?

The name of John Reed, a famous American journalist who wrote the book “10 Days That Shook the World” about the events of October, was known to almost everyone in Soviet times. The ubiquitous reporter from a distant country became a real hero in Russia: an unsurpassed chronicler of the revolution, an ardent communist and an extraordinary person. His biography was even published in the series “The Lives of Remarkable People,” which was a considerable honor at that time. Died in October 1920 from typhus, the young American was buried near the Kremlin wall, where revolution heroes were buried at that time. His short life, like a flash, left a bright mark and many questions that historians still cannot answer unequivocally.

John Reed lived only less than 33 years, but his short and brilliant life path became a legend, the mystery of which many tried to unravel. His works “Mexico Rising” and especially “Ten Days That Shook the World” were widely known in their time. But what kind of person was their author? “Why did it happen that a boy born into a rich and privileged family turned away from the material things he could have enjoyed and began to live so fully the life of the oppressed? How did a child, surrounded by excessive care, frail in body and weak in spirit, grow into a man who boldly rode under a hail of bullets and was not afraid of prisons, where he ended up more than once during his adventurous life? How did a boy whose ancestors were mostly hardened businessmen... become one of the most outstanding literary talents of his time? — Reed’s compatriot Tamara Hovey wrote in her memoirs.

John Reed was born on October 22, 1887 in the American city of Portland on the Pacific coast, in the family of a wealthy businessman. His father was the kind of man Jack London portrayed in his stories of the American West. It was from his father that John Reed inherited a sharp mind and a bold, courageous spirit.

His brilliant talents manifested themselves early, and after graduating from school he was sent to study at the most famous university in America - Harvard, where children only from the richest and most privileged sections of society studied. John Reed spent four years within the walls of the prestigious Harvard, managing to organize a socialist club among the students - the offspring of the nouveau riche and the rich! When this became known, D. Reed's mentors consoled themselves with the thought that the socialist club was nothing more than a simple boyish whim. “This radicalism will pass away from him,” they said, “as soon as he steps out of the college gates into the wide arena of life.”

When John Reed completed his course, received his degree and went out into the wide world, he conquered it in an incredibly short time - with his energy, enthusiasm, love of life and, of course, his pen. While still at university, in his role as editor of the satirical sheet Lampoon, he showed himself to be a master of a light and brilliant style. Not limiting himself to satire, he wrote romantic poems, which he read at student parties. Over time, the pride of Portland, a graduate of the prestigious Harvard, a poet and a favorite of women, John Reed, became seriously interested in writing.

Dramas and stories began to come out from his pen. Literary creativity led John Reed to journalism: he began collaborating with left-wing political publications - New Review, The Masses, The Metropolitan Magazine. Publishers bombarded the young journalist with offers; large newspapers increasingly ordered him to review the most important events in foreign life. Anyone who wanted to keep abreast of modern life had only to follow John Reed, for wherever anything significant happened, he invariably appeared. A rebel by nature, Reed was always present where there were strikes, strikes and labor unrest. In 1912, he was in raging Mexico, where an army of peasants rose up to fight under the command of the legendary Pancho Villa, in 1913 - in Paterson, where a strike of textile workers turned into an open uprising. In the spring of 1914, Reed wrote the essay “The Colorado War,” in which he described the massacre of striking miners in Ludlow. It is no coincidence that the Czech-Austrian writer and anti-fascist E. E. Kisch subsequently called John Reed “a journalist on the barricades.”

With the beginning (1914-1918) D. Reed kept up with wherever the guns roared. Danger never frightened him; on the contrary, it was his native element. The young journalist was always in the thick of things, making his way into forbidden areas, to the front lines. He tried to see the world war from two sides - first through the eyes of the Entente troops, and then, having moved to the other side of the front line, from the German trenches. As America entered the war, Reed underwent medical surgery that resulted in the loss of one of his kidneys. Doctors declared him unfit for military service. “The loss of a kidney may free me from serving in a war between two nations,” he declared, “but it does not exempt me from serving in a war between classes.”

John Reed visited Italy, France, England, Germany, Greece, Serbia and the Russian Empire, where he arrived in 1915 and was soon arrested for his bold revelations of the tsarist government.

In 1916, Reed returned to the United States, where he began editing the revolutionary magazine Masses. But a year later he again hurried to Russia, which was on the verge of revolution. It seemed that already in the first revolutionary skirmishes of Petrograd, the American journalist recognized the approach of a full-scale class war.

In August 1917, John Reed arrived in Petrograd with his wife, American writer and journalist Louise Bryant-Trullinger. The Russian Revolution captured him completely! The Bolsheviks conquered the American rebel with their energy and recklessness. He wrote about them with undisguised sympathy. The passport of an American journalist opened doors for him on both sides of the barricades. On October 25, 1917 (in his book he uses dates according to the new style and calls the November Revolution) Reed first entered the Winter Palace, occupied by cadets, and at the end of the day he was already here again as part of the Red Guards marching to storm the Winter Palace. He was omnipresent: at numerous rallies, at meetings of various committees, congresses, in the Smolny and Tauride palaces; met with Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, with the right and the left... He will write about all this in his famous book “Ten Days that Shook the World.”

He collected material for it everywhere and whatever he could find - sets of newspapers, proclamations, brochures and posters. He had a special passion for posters. Every time a new poster appeared somewhere, he would tear it off the wall without thinking. In those days, posters were printed in such numbers and with such speed that it was difficult to find room for them all: Socialist Revolutionary, Menshevik and Bolshevik posters were pasted one on top of the other, so that one day Reed tore off a layer of sixteen posters, one under the other. His friend and colleague A.R. Williams, with whom D. Reed worked in the Bureau of Revolutionary Propaganda at the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, recalled: “Bursting into my room and waving a huge paper slab, he exclaimed: “Look!” In one fell swoop I grabbed the entire revolution and counter-revolution!’”

John Reed wrote “Ten Days That Shook the World” in America, where he returned in the spring of 1918. The book was created in record time—less than a month: Reed worked all day long. In the preface to the book, he wrote: “In the struggle, my sympathies were not neutral. But in recounting those great days, I tried to view the events through the eye of a conscientious chronicler, interested in capturing the truth... This book is a clot of history, history in the form in which I observed it. It does not pretend to be more than a detailed account of the November Revolution, when the Bolsheviks, led by workers and soldiers, seized state power in Russia and transferred it to the hands of the Soviets. The Bolsheviks, it seems to me, are not a destructive force, but the only party in Russia that has a creative program and sufficient power to implement it. Whatever others may think about Bolshevism, it is undeniable that the Russian Revolution is one of the greatest events in the history of mankind, and the rise of the Bolsheviks is a phenomenon of world significance. Just as historians are looking for the slightest details about the Paris Commune, so they will want to know everything that happened in Petrograd in November 1917, what spirit the people were at that time, what their leaders were like, what they said and what they did. That’s what I was thinking about when I wrote this book.”

Publishing the book, which described the first days of the revolutionary events in Russia with unusual vividness and force, turned out to be difficult: several copies of the manuscripts were confiscated. But in March 1919 it was still possible to release it. On the first copy, John Reed wrote: “To my publisher Horatio Livewright, who nearly went bankrupt while printing this book.” The brave Liveright was the only one in New York who decided to publish Ten Days. The book, which had a worldwide resonance, was highly appreciated by V.I. Lenin: “Having read John Reed’s book “Ten Days That Shook the World” with enormous interest and unflagging attention, I wholeheartedly recommend this work to workers of all countries. I would like to see this book distributed in millions of copies and translated into all languages, since it gives a truthful and unusually vividly written account of events that are so important for understanding what the proletarian revolution is, what the dictatorship of the proletariat is.”

The book about the first days of the October Revolution became John Reed's most famous work. It may seem strange that such a book about Russia could be written by a foreigner, an American, who does not know the language of the people, their way of life... But Reed was not an indifferent outside observer, he was a passionate revolutionary who saw deep meaning in those events. This understanding gave him that visual acuity, without which it was impossible to describe what was happening. Now, many years after the October events, which turned the life of Russia and then the whole world upside down, one can have different attitudes towards “Ten Days That Shook the World”, but one thing is true: the book was written sincerely, its author firmly believed in a bright future humanity. Hence his conviction that “the Russian revolution is one of the greatest events in the history of mankind, and the rise of the Bolsheviks is a phenomenon of world significance.” It is quite possible that if John Reed had lived longer than 33 years, he would have been disillusioned with the Bolshevik coup, but he was not destined to learn about the processes of 1937-1938. in the USSR, neither about Stalin’s camps, nor about the tragedy of the entire people.

After the publication of his book, John Reed made about twenty campaign trips across America, giving fiery speeches at countless mass meetings in defense of the October Revolution in Russia. In the spring of 1919, he was elected editor of the new newspaper, the New York Communist. In August and September of the same year, Reed took part in the creation of the Communist Labor Party of the USA, formed from a breakaway left wing of the Socialist Party. In the fall of 1919, the “frantic reporter” secretly came to Russia, worked in Moscow, at the Comintern, and collected materials for a new book dedicated to the post-October period. In July 1920, he took part in the Second Congress of the Comintern. Shortly after this, the “singer of the revolution” John Reed fell ill with typhus and died on October 19, 1920. There were persistent rumors that he was poisoned. John Silas Reed was buried near the Kremlin wall, where the Bolsheviks buried their most devoted comrades. A monument in the form of a granite block was erected above his grave, on which a laconic inscription is carved: “John Reed, delegate of the Third International, 1920.”

In recent years, interest in the personality of the American journalist has increased again, but today his impeccable biography is called into question by some researchers. For example, US historian Anthony Sutton came to the sensational conclusion that John Reed was most likely a “double agent” of both the Kremlin and Wall Street, or an intermediary between them. From Sutton’s point of view, it is otherwise difficult to explain such close and benevolent attention of very influential persons in the United States to an ordinary journalist, one of the leaders of the US Communist Party - at the initial stage of its creation - and an active member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. It cannot but surprise, the historian notes, that as soon as Reed got into one or another trouble, of which there were many in his life, people immediately began to bother about him, who, according to generally accepted logic, would not worry about a person who openly sympathized with the Bolsheviks could. Judging by Sutton's data, John Reed had a close connection with large American capital and the White House during the Mexican Revolution. In any case, writes Sutton, “when during the First World War a journalist was detained in tsarist Russia with letters of recommendation from Bucharest, which he was taking to anti-Russian persons in Galicia, not only the editors of his native magazine Metropolitan stood up for him, which is quite naturally, but the owners of the publication are also the largest bankers in the United States, after which Reed was immediately released.” Sutton testifies that the archives of the American State Department contain documents about the repeated arrests and detentions of John Reed (in Norway, Finland) and his further releases after the intervention of Metropolitan magazine and the US State Department, as well as William Franklin Sands, who was the executive secretary of American International Corporation" and was a very influential person in the American business world. The most likely hypothesis, from the point of view of E. Sutton, is that “John Reed was in fact an agent of Morgan - perhaps only half aware of his dual role - that his anti-capitalist articles supported the valuable myth that all capitalists are in constant hostility with all socialist revolutionaries."

It is difficult for historians to find out the truth, but it will probably have to be done. Moreover, in addition to Sutton’s research, other works about the life of John Reed appear. For example, that the archives of the US Communist Party allegedly contain evidence of John Reed’s active participation in money laundering that Russia sent to America. So to the question of who is actually buried near the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow - a fiery communist, an agent of American tycoons or a “double agent” - historians have not given an exact answer and continue to argue about it.

V. M. Sklyarenko, I. A. Rudycheva, V. V. Syadro. 50 famous mysteries of the history of the 20th century