Ten Days that Shook the World

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This article is about the book. For the film, see October: Ten Days That Shook the World.
Ten Days that Shook the World  

1919 Boni & Liveright hardback edition
Author John Reed
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) History
Publisher Boni & Liveright, New York
Publication date March 1919
Media type print (hardback and paperback)
Pages 371

Ten Days that Shook the World (1919) 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.

John Reed died in 1920 shortly after the book was finished, and he is one of the few Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow, a site normally reserved only for the most prominent Soviet leaders.

Contents

[edit] Concept and creation

This book is a slice of intensified history — history as I saw it. It does not pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the November[1] Revolution, when the Bolsheviki, at the head of the workers and soldiers, seized the state power of Russia and placed it in the hands of the Soviets.
—John Reed[2]

John Reed was on an assignment for The Masses, a magazine of socialist politics, when he was reporting the Russian Revolution. Although Reed states that he had "tried to see events with the eye of a conscientious reporter, interested in setting down the truth"[2] during the time of the event, he makes it clear in the preface that "in the struggle my sympathies were not neutral"[2] (since the book leans towards the Bolsheviks and their viewpoints).

Before John Reed left for Russia, the Espionage Act was passed on June 15, 1917, which fined and imprisoned anyone who interfered with recruiting of soldiers for the troops and prohibited the mailing of any newspaper or magazine that promoted such sentiments. The U. S. Postal Service was also given leave to deny any mailing that fitted these standards from further postal delivery, and then to disqualify a magazine because it had missed a mailing and hence, was no longer considered a regular publication.[3] Because of this, The Masses was forced by the United States federal government to cease publication in the fall of 1917, after refusing to change the magazine's policy against the war. The Liberator, founded by Max Eastman under his and his sister's private control, published Reed's articles concerning the Russian Revolution instead. In an effort to ensure the magazine's survival, Eastman compromised and tempered its views accordingly.[4]

Upon returning from Russia during April 1918 from Kristiania in Norway, after being barred from either traveling to the United States or returning to Russia since February 23 by the State Department, Reed's trunk of notes and materials on the revolution — which included Russian handbills, newspapers, and speeches — were seized by custom officials, who interrogated him for four hours over his activities in Russia during the previous eight months. Michael Gold, an eyewitness to Reed's arrival to Manhattan, recalls how "a swarm of Department of Justice men stripped him, went over every inch of his clothes and baggage, and put him through the usual inquisition. Reed had been sick with ptomaine on the boat. The inquisition had also been painful."[5] Back home during mid-summer 1918, Reed, worried that "his vivid impressions on the revolution would fade"[6], fought hard to regain his papers from the possession of the government, who refused to return them.

Reed would not receive his materials until seven months months later in November. Max Eastman recalls a meeting with John Reed in the middle of Sheridan Square during the period of time when Reed isolated himself writing the book:

“ ...he wrote Ten Days that Shook the World—wrote it in another ten days and ten nights or little more. He was gaunt, unshaven, greasy-skinned, a stark sleepless half-crazy look on his slightly potato-like face—had come down after a night's work for a cup of coffee.

"Max, don't tell anybody where I am. I'm writing the Russian revolution in a book. I've got all the placards and papers up there in a little room and a Russian dictionary, and I'm working all day and all night. I haven't shut my eyes for thirty-six hours. I'll finish the whole thing in two weeks. And I've got a name for it too—Ten Days that Shook the World. Good-by, I've got to go get some coffee. Don't for God's sake tell anybody where I am!"

Do you wonder I emphasize his brains? Not so many feats can be found in American literature to surpass what he did there in those two or three weeks in that little room with those piled-up papers in a half-known tongue, piled clear up to the ceiling, and a small dog-eared dictionary, and a memory, and a determination to get it right, and a gorgeous imagination to paint it when he go it. But I wanted to comment on now was the unqualified, concentrated joy in his mad eyes that morning. He was doing what he was made to do, writing a great book. And he had a name for it too—Ten Days that Shook the World![7]

 ”

[edit] Critical response

Ten Days that Shook the World has received mixed responses since its publication in 1919, resulting in a wide range of critical reviews from negative to positive. However, the book was overall positively received by critics at the time of its first publication, despite critics' vocal opposition to Reed's political beliefs.[8]

George F. Kennan, an American diplomat and historian who had no love for Bolshevism and is best known as "the father of containment", praised the book: "Reed's account of the events of that time rises above every other contemporary record for its literary power, its penetration, its command of detail" and would be "remembered when all others are forgotten." Kennan saw it as "a reflection of blazing honesty and a purity of idealism that did unintended credit to the American society that produced him, the merits of which he himself understood so poorly."[9] On March 1, 1999, The New York Times reported[10] New York University's "Top 100 Journalism Works of Journalism" list,[11] which placed Ten Days that Shook the World at #7.[12] Project director Mitchell Stephens explains the reasoning behind the judges' decision:

“ Perhaps the most controversial work on our list is the seventh, John Reed’s book, "Ten Days That Shook the World," reporting on the October revolution in Russia in 1917. Yes, as conservative critics have noted, Reed was a partisan. Yes, historians would do better. But this was probably the most consequential news story of the century, and Reed was there, and Reed could write. The magnitude of the event being reported on and the quality of the writing were other important standards in our considerations.[13] ”

But not all responses were positive. After the rise of Stalinism in Russia, Joseph Stalin argued that Reed was wrong on many things in Ten Days that Shook the World, particularly the parts about Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s archenemy. The book portrays Trotsky as the one who led the revolution with Lenin and mentions Stalin only twice — one of them being only in the recitation of a list of names. Russian writer Anatoly Rybakov elaborates on Stalinist Soviet Union's ban on Ten Days that Shook the World: "The main task was to build a mighty socialist state. For that, mighty power was needed. Stalin was at the head of that power, which mean that he stood at its source with Lenin. Together with Lenin he led the October Revolution. John Reed had presented the history of October differently. That wasn't the John Reed we needed."[14] After Stalin's death, the book was allowed to recirculate. In 1999, a paleoconservative journal, Intercollegiate Review, placed it in its list of the fifty worst (defined as "books which were widely celebrated in their day but upon reflection can be seen as foolish, wrong-headed, or even pernicious") books of the century, writing: "...and after that, Reed went home and the Bolsheviks struck the set."[15]

[edit] Introduction by Lenin

After its first publication, Reed returned to Russia in the fall of 1919, delighted to learn that Vladimir Lenin had taken time to read the book. Furthermore, Lenin agreed to write an introduction that first appeared in the 1922 edition published by Boni & Liveright (New York)[8]:

“ With the greatest interest and with never slackening attention I read John Reed's book, Ten Days that Shook the World. Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world. Here is a book which I should like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages. It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. These problems are widely discussed, but before one can accept or reject these ideas, he must understand the full significance of his decision. John Reed's book will undoubtedly help to clear this question, which is the fundamental problem of the international labor movement.

V. LENIN.
 End of 1919

 ”

[edit] Comparative perspective

For its role in bringing information to the American public about a socialist revolution occurring on the other side of the world, Ten Days that Shook the World bears comparison with American journalist Edgar Snow's 1937 account of the rise of the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong, Red Star Over China.

[edit] Notes and references

  1. ^ According to the Gregorian calendar, the October Revolution takes place in November.
  2. ^ a b c Reed, John (1990-02-07) [1919]. Ten Days that Shook the World (1st ed.). Penguin Classics. ISBN 0140182934. 
  3. ^ Mott, Frank Luther (1941). American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 250 Years, 1690-1940. New York: The Macmillan Company. 
  4. ^ Eastman, Max (1964). Love and Revolution: My Journey Through an Epoch. New York: Random House. pp. 69–78. 
  5. ^ Gold, Michael (1940-10-22). "He Loved the People". The New Masses: 8–11. 
  6. ^ Duke, David C. (1987). John Reed. Boston: Twayne Publishers. p. 41. ISBN 0805775021. 
  7. ^ Eastman, Max (1942). Heroes I Have Known: Twelve Who Lived Great Lives. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 223–4. 
  8. ^ a b Duke, David C. (1987). John Reed. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 080575021. 
  9. ^ Kennan, George Frost (1989) [1956]. Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920. Princeton University Press. pp. 68–69. ISBN 0691008418. 
  10. ^ Barringer, Felicity (1999-03-01). "Journalism's Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century's Top Stories". Media (The New York Times). http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E3D6123CF932A35750C0A96F958260&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Organizations/N/New%20York%20University. Retrieved on 2007-11-17. 
  11. ^ This list only includes works in the United States in the 20th Century.
  12. ^ "The Top 100 Works of Journalism". New York University. http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Top%20100%20page.htm. Retrieved on 2007-11-17. 
  13. ^ Stephens, Mitchell. "The Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century". New York University. http://www.nyu.edu/classes/stephens/Top%20100%20-%20German%20page.htm. Retrieved on 2007-11-17. 
  14. ^ Lehman, Daniel (2002). John Reed & the Writing of Revolution. United States: Ohio University Press. p. 201. ISBN 0821414674. 
  15. ^ "The Fifty Worst (and Best) Books of the Century" (pdf). The Intercollegiate Review (Intercollegiate Studies Institute) 35 (1): 3–13. Fall 1999. ISSN 00205249. http://www.mmisi.org/ir/35_01/50worst.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-08-01. 

[edit] See also

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