John Reed Biography and List of Works

American journalist and poet-adventurer, whose life as a revolutionary writer ended in Russia, but made him the hero of a generation of radical intellectuals. Reed became a close friend of V.I. Lenin and was an eyewitness to the 1917 October revolution. He recorded this historical event in his best-known book TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (1920). Reed is buried with other Bolshevik heroes beside the Kremlin wall.

"I said, I think that a guy who is always interested in the condition of the world and changing it, either has no problems of his own or refuses to face them."
(Henry Miller about Reed in The Reds, dir. by Warren Beatty, 1981)

John Reed was born in Portland Oregon into a wealthy family. At college he joined the swimming team and the dramatics club. He served on the editorial board of the Harvard Monthly and Lampoon, and was class orator and poet. After graduating from Harvard in 1910, Reed travelled in England and Spain. Upon his return to America Reed started his career as a journalist in leftist magazines. He was one of the leading socialists of the New Review and The Masses.

During this time Reed made close friends with Mabel Dodge, the rich hostess, who ran her salon at 23 Fifth Avenue. She helped organize the 1913 Armoury Show, which brought Cubism to New York. In 1913 Reed published his first book, SANGAR, a collection of poems. In 1914 he was arrested for trying to speak for striking silk workers in Paterson, New Jersey. He then wrote 'The Pageant of the Paterson Strike', which was enacted at Madison Square Garden, as a benefit to aid the workers. Reed was arrested several times for organizing strikes and he soon became a radical leader.

In the early 1910s Reed went to Mexico to cover the Mexican revolution for the Metropolitan Magazine. He spent four months with Pancho Villa and his troops and described the revolutionary fighting in INSURGENT MEXICO (1914).

During World War I Reed worked as a war correspondent for the Metropolitan Magazine, where some of his stories were rejected on the basis of leftist sympathies. Reed's reports on the fighting in Germany, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Russia were published in THE WAR IN EASTERN EUROPE (1916). Reed was forced to return to the United States for an operation that removed one of his kidneys. In early 1917 he married the journalist Louise Bryant and travelled with her to Russia to witness and report on the October Revolution in St. Petersburg for The Masses. His pro-Communist and anti-war articles were partly responsible for that journal's indictment and trials on the grounds of sedition.

In 1919 he organized the Communist Labour Party and was founder and first editor of the Voice of Labour. For a short time he was the Soviet consul in New York. When the Communist Party and the Communist Labour party split in 1919, Reed became the leader of the latter. After charges of treasons he fled to Finland where the authorities kept him in prison before exchanging him for Russian-held Finnish prisoners of war. In prison Reed wrote more poetry and outlined a pair of novels, which he never completed.

"This is just a beginning... It's not happening the way we thought it would. It's not happening the way we wanted to, but it's happening. If you walk out of it now, what's your whole life then?"
(Warren Beatty in The Reds)

In Russia he gave speeches and was joined by Bryant, whom he had secretly contacted. At the peak of his career, Reed was stricken with typhus and died on October 19, 1920. Reed's popularity as a radical leader led to the creation of John Reed clubs across the United States. His life was the subject for the successful 1981 motion picture Reds.

Ten Days That Shook the World focuses on the crucial moment of history when Lenin pressed the Bolsheviks to seize power. Workers, soldiers, peasants, and sailors stormed the Winter Palace. Trotsky announced the overthrow of the provisional government, and counter revolutionary forces threatened Moscow. Reed recounts conversations and arguments, details political machinations, and speculates on personal motives. Although Reed's enthusiasm for the revolution hinders his objectivity, the book gives a unique, firsthand account of a major turning point in Russian history.

For further reading: John Reed by G. Hicks (1936, rev. 1968); Writers on the Left by D. Aaron (1961); The Lost Revolutionary by D.L. Walker (1967); So Short a Time by B. Gelb (1973); John Reed by T. Hovey (1975); Romantic Revolutionary by R.A. Rosenstone (1975); Six Who Protested by F.C. Giffin (1977); Friend and Lover by V. Gardner (1982); John Reed by D.C. Duke (1987); John Reed by E.Homberger (1990) - FILM: The Reds, dir. by Warren Beatty, 1981, depicting the last years of John Reed, who goes with his wife to Russia and writes Ten Days That Shook the World. Film begins in 1915 when Reed first met the writer Louise Bryant (Daine Keaton). Their marriage, break up, and reunion is portrayed against the leftist movements in the US, and bringing on the screen intellectuals, writers, politicians, eyewitnesses of the period. Jack Nicholson is Bryant's lover Eugene O'Neill and Maureen Stapleton as Emma Goldman won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. The celebrity witnesses included Adela Rogers St. John, George Jessel, Will Durant, Rebecca West, Hamilton Fish, and Henry Miller. Vittorio Storaro won an Oscar for his superb cinematography. The Reds was partly filmed in Finland. The scenes from Moscow were actually made in Helsinki.

DIANA'S DEBUT, (1910)