Talk:John Reed (journalist)

added information on attending morristown prep prior to harvard. Actually a segment of the film reds was to be filmed at Morristown beard, but the school did not want the negative attention assocaited with communism at the time.

Billy Sunday and George Bellows

According to a book on George Bellows I'm reading by M. Haverstock Reed and Bellows travelled from NYC to Philly in 1915 to cover one of Billy Sunday's revivals. That date doesn't exactly jive with him being listed in Europe from 1914 on. If anyone can get the dates correct this is one really interesting hapinstances of history that a famous (or infamous) evangelist, journalist, and painter were all togather at one event. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.116.157.176 (talk) 03:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Copyvio reversion

I'm pretty sure that almost the entire article was a copyright violation. It didn't read like an encyclopedia article, and when I googled a phrase, this came out. It's an extract from the book Howard Zinn on History (2000), and I'm pretty sure it's copyrighted. It also turns out that the editor who added this information has also added other articles with dubious copyright violations, see The Masses and New Masses. - Hahnchen 18:56, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

I concur, this seems like plagerism, all sources are from the same book. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.174.176.4 (talk) 17:21, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

"only American buried in the Kremlin Wall in Red Square"

The article claims that reed was the "only American buried in the Kremlin Wall in Red Square"; I was under the impression Bill Haywood's ashes (in part) were also burried there.

-Deus Homoni 09:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

I think C.E. Ruthenberg's ashes are also there and there may be one other American. BTW: properly speaking, Reed was buried AT the Kremlin wall, not IN it... Carrite (talk) 03:37, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

"Hi all,"

why you accept that 'hahnchen' destroy in an act of barbarism the whole article, swinging the hammer of 'copyrigt law' ? He used only one phrase to be 'pretty sure' ! Let him demonstrate the copyr. violation of every phrase. Beside the wording is common knowledge not owned by single authors.

Question

"Western historians examining Soviet archives after the end of the Cold War discovered that Reed, whose first-hand account of the Russian Revolution has been much-celebrated over the years, in fact was on the Bolshevik payroll, receiving more than $1 million (in 1918 dollars)."

Could I get a cite, a source, a reference, or any sign of validity on this?

I think that Reed was on a payroll for soviet propaganda to Germany, not for his personal project Ten Days That Shook the World. He was working in Smolny with Albert Rhys Williams. Take a look to Louise Bryants Six Red Months or Williams' Trough the Russian Revolution.

{ This assertion is ludicrous. Reed was from a prominent wealthy family. He had access to money without having to risk his life} —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.110.56.206 (talk) 05:20, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

thats absurd, Reed even went to mexico and became friend with Pancho Villa, no money was payd for him there either.

Someones attempt to tarnish Reeds career? -G

The dollar figure cited is ludicrous. Reed did try to smuggle out propaganda funds but was arrested in Finland and the cash and jewels seized. One must be careful on this topic because there are still anti-communist (and to a much lesser extent pro-communist) polemics flying about. "They always were dupes and spies" being the line of argument, and there's no more satisfying way to "prove" this than to purport to trace mass external funding of American radicalism "back to the egg," so to speak. This is not to say there weren't attempts at funding Bolshevik propaganda around the world by the Comintern — there certainly were. But "on the Bolshevik payroll, receiving more than $1 million" is factually erroneous, tendentious malarkey. (Trust me, I actually own the archival microfilm and have studied these things in depth!). —Tim Davenport, Early American Marxism website, Corvallis, OR Carrite (talk) 03:15, 24 August 2009 (UTC) ADDENDA: I'm too lazy to look up the document, but I just recalled that the value of stuff given to Reed was approximately $25,000 in currency and jewels; and a like amount was dispersed to "John Anderson" (Kristap Beika) on behalf of the CPA. Neither one of them made it through the frontier successfully with the loot. Reed was arrested and had to turn back and Anderson/Beika lost his rocks crossing a different frontier. Carrite (talk) 03:41, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Communist Party USA illegal?

I don't think the party itself was illegal. The Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 probably made some of their activities illegal (membership in an international party, basically), aside from their actual criminal acts. The Palmer Raids exclusively attacked members of leftist groups, but none of the groups, per se, were made illegal. The article for Workers Party of America says it was "underground", but never illegal. Is this nit-picking? 192.132.210.30 19:00, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

german wiki says reed have had a Criminal procedure by the Supreme Court of the United States for High treason and so he fleed from the USA, emigrating in the soviet union --Tets1 13:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I hope the grossly erroneous German wiki has been fixed! Carrite (talk) 03:20, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

With regard to "illegality"... There was a campaign in 1918-1919 for the various states to implement their own "anti-Syndicalism" laws, which made advocacy of revolution a criminal offense. Therefore, the Communist Party was technically illegal one place but not another — their 1922 convention in Bridgman, Michigan was raided by STATE authorities charging violation of STATE laws, even though the Bureau of Investigation provided them the intelligence and helped out with the manpower. The other thing that proved troublesome for the early Reds was the fact that membership in the CPA was interpreted as illegal per se with respect to immigration laws, which were written so as to bar those professing "anarchist" beliefs. As an overwhelming percentage of the early Communist movement were immigrants (approaching 90% of the total in the first years), this made membership "illegal" for most whether the activity of the party was technically banned by state law or not... Interestingly, the courts ruled that membership in the Union of Russian Workers (Anarchist group targeted in Nov. 1919) and the Communist Party of America (hit in December 1919) were illegal per se, but membership in the Communist Labor Party (also hit in December and January 1920 with the CPA) was not. But I digress... Carrite (talk) 03:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Left Communist?

He is in the Left Communist Category, but no source or citation for that is given. Mdotley 22:54, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

-Here: "Even at the time there was a reaction against these blatant attempts to reconcile reactionary nationalism with proletarian internationalism. Lenin himself warned against ‘painting nationalism red’. Significantly, Roy criticised the Congress before it was held, and refused to attend what he dubbed as “Zinoviev’s Circus”, while John Reed, the American left-wing communist, also objected bitterly to its “demagogy and display”." (The Baku Congress and the Consequences of Opportunism, Communists and the National Question, Part 3: The Debate during the Revolutionary Wave and the Lessons for Today. http://en.internationalism.org/book/export/html/1595) A

Also "Reed “made no secret of his contempt and hatred for Zinoviev and Radek, whose authority in the Comintern was then pre-eminent” " (Theodore Draper’s Roots of American Communism in Eastman, LR p. 259 qtd. in Goldner, Loren. Max Eastman  : One American Radical’s View of the “Bolshevization” of the American Revolutionary Movement and a Forgotten, and Unforgettable, Portrait of Trotsky. 2006. http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/eastman.html)

Mayis

Again, we must be VERY careful about those who purport a deathbed conversion of John Reed to The Glorious Cause of Anti-Communism. Ben Gitlow was himself a committed anti-communist when he made this assertion (and was trying to sell books to boot!). He was in no position to know about the matter in any event, as Reed was in Moscow and Gitlow was in New York, arrested in December and in prison not too long after. Louise Bryant, who was herself in Soviet Russia, claimed there was no such deathbed conversion — statement made in some magazine article or other that I typed up for my site, from The Liberator, I believe... Ted Draper, a great historian, similarly had his own axes to grind, true fact. The facts are: (1) Reed was sent to the USA by Lenin (who wrote the introduction for his book!) as the "consul" of Soviet Russia; (2) Reed was subsequently an activist in the Left Wing movement of 1919 before the Communist Parties were even formed; (3) Reed was a founding member of the Communist Labor Party; (4) Reed was sent to Soviet Russia by the CLP as its representative to the CI; (5) Reed went to work for the Comintern. This doesn't sound like the activity of someone disillusioned by the Revolution by his experiences in 1917-18, eh? Years after his death was a great deal of propaganda made by those claiming to know the innermost thoughts of the Comintern man in Soviet Russia in 1920 — by those who simply were in no position to know these things. And the woman who was in a position to know says that no such "conversion" happened... Propaganda. Carrite (talk) 03:34, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

"Ambiguity"

‘His feelings about the revolution were now ambiguous: on the one hand, he told Emma Goldman, who had recently arrived aboard The 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’ I don't think this suggests ambiguity in his feelings so much as a lack of dogmatism and willingness to hear all sides of the debate. And if it *does* suggest ambiguity, then the ambiguity it suggests is in his feelings about the Cheka, not about the revolution itself.82.23.135.169 (talk) 22:42, 4 July 2010 (UTC)