John Reed

1887-1920

John Reed's background was bourgeois. He went to a privileged preparatory school and aristocratic Harvard University, where he studied history, languages and literature preparing himself for a journalistic career. After graduation he travelled, went to Europe and on returning to New York worked for the local magazines as a poet and an essayist. His youth was closely connected with Greenwich Village, the part of New York that is inhabited by artists, writers, "Boheme". On the eve of First World War it was the center of intellectual unrest.

John Reed's friends called him "A Lion Cub". Lincoln Stiffens, "American Journalist N°. 1", realised how great the "Lion Cub's" talent was; he sensed the nobility of his nature and treated him as his adopted son. He recommended John Reed for a job at "The American Magazine", where he stayed three years, reading manuscripts and writing stories and verses. His early stories were sketches of "the lower depths", they were about the people of the slums ("The Capitalist", "Where the Heart Is"). Reed's manner is that of a newspaper reporter, an interview, a fact, an episode "in a belles-lettres frame".

Reed's ideological education was continued by his four-month stay in Mexico. He went there as a correspondent representing "The New York World" and the "Metropolitan", a monthly magazine. He walked hundreds of kilometers with the peasant army headed by Pancho Villa. Reed observed the peasant Civil War from inside: he was a participator, he did not only see the peasant revolution but he sensed, with all his heart, the profound social significance of that revolution. He understood the peasants' motivation, their needs and their dreams, his respect and his sympathy were given to the people. [79] Sensational material did not interest this reporter; it was the people's dedication to the cause of freedom from feudal oppression, independence, human dignity that appealed to his heart.

He arrived in September 1917, about a month before the October Revolution, and he plunged into the stormy political life of Russia. He knew some of Bolsheviks, met Lenin, went to Smolny. He was in Winter Palace on the night November, 7. He saw everything with his own in his eyes, and he described all he saw in his epoch - making book "Ten Days that Shook the World".

In 1919 he took part in founding the Communist Party of the USA, and that was the beginning of his life as a professional revolutionary. A few months later he went to Russia again this time illegally, with the idea of writing a new book and working for the Comintern. Gathering material for the new book he travelled to the furthest corners of Russia; he showed true heroism and selflessness. He died of typhoid fever in 1920 and was buried in Moscow near the Kremlin Wall.