domingo, 8 de novembro de 2009

John Reed - Vida e Obra

John Reed

Origem: Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre.

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John Reed
John Reed
Nome completo
 John Silas Reed
Nascimento
 22 de Outubro de 1887
Portland
Morte
 19 de Outubro de 1920 (32 anos)
Moscou
Nacionalidade
 Flag of the United States.svg estado-unidense
Ocupação
 jornalista e ativista
John "Jack" Silas Reed (Portland, 22 de Outubro de 1887 — Moscou, 19 de Outubro de 1920) foi um jornalista e ativista norte-americano, famoso pelo seu livro Dez dias que abalaram o Mundo, em que relata em primeira-mão os acontecimentos que constituíram a Revolução de Outubro em que os bolcheviques tomaram o poder na Rússia. Ele foi marido da escritora e feminista Louise Bryant.

Índice

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 Origens

John Reed nasceu em 1887 em Portland no Oregon. Por não ser um apreciador da cidade onde nasceu, partiu assim que pôde para a Universidade de Harvard em 1910.
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Após a conclusão dos seus estudos, embarcou num navio de carga rumo à Europa, tendo passado por Londres, Paris e Madrid. Mais tarde, regressou ao seu país, onde trabalhou como editor numa revista sobre política.

 Jornalismo

Reed ficou conhecido como jornalista pela sua cobertura das greves de trabalhadores e da Revolução Mexicana. Enquanto cobria a Primeira Guerra Mundial, na Europa, interessou-se pela Revolução Bolchevique e partiu para a Rússia. Conheceu Lenin e, das suas conversas com ele, fez um livro.
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Em Lawrence, Massachusetts, durante uma manifestação dos operários de uma fiação apoiada pelo Partido Socialista, conheceu Bill Haywood. Haywood revelou-lhe que 25 mil operários de uma fábrica na outra margem do rio Hudson, que manifestavam exigindo oito horas de trabalho diário, estavam sendo maltratados pela polícia. Reed juntou-se aos manifestantes, sendo preso durante quatro dias, tendo escrito mais tarde no jornal "The Masses" sobre estes eventos.
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No México, em 1914, Pancho Villa liderava uma rebelião de camponeses quando Reed foi enviado como correspondente. Em pouco tempo, tornou-se próximo do líder revolucionário. Os relatos apaixonados de Reed não eram aquilo a que se chama jornalismo objetivo e imparcial, mas ajudaram a espalhar a notícia da revolução.
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Reed tinha acabado de regressar aos EUA, reconhecido como um grande jornalista, quando no Colorado se deu o Massacre de Ludlow, onde mineiros em greve foram abatidos pela Guarda Nacional a mando da família Rockefeller. Esses acontecimentos foram registados no livro "A Guerra do Colorado".
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No verão de 1914, quando a Primeira Guerra Mundial eclodiu na Europa, John Reed escreveu:
"And here are the nations, flying at each other's throats like dogs… and art, industry, commerce, individual liberty, life itself taxed to maintain monstrous machines of death." "(Aqui estão as nações, a se lançar aos pescoços umas das outras como cães… e a arte, a indústria, o comércio, a liberdade individual, a própria vida são taxadas para sustentar monstruosas máquinas de morte.)"
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Reed voltou para casa em Portland para ver sua mãe, a qual nunca aprovou suas idéias radicais. Lá, no salão da IWW local, ele escutou um discurso de Emma Goldman. Foi uma experiência. Ela era uma fonte de inspiração daquela geração do feminismo e anarquismo.
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Os grandes periódicos de Nova Iorque pressionaram-no para que ele cobrisse a guerra européia e ele concordou em ir à revista The Metropolitan. Ao mesmo tempo ele escreveu um artigo para a revista The Masses. Foi uma guerra de lucros, ele falou. A caminho da Europa, ele estava consciente do luxo do convés da primeira classe e dos três mil italianos no porão. Ele chegou logo na Inglaterra, nos Países Baixos e Alemanha e, então, na França, andando pelos campos de batalha: chuva, lama, cadáveres. O que mais o deprimiu foi o patriotismo exacerbado de ambos os lados, até em alguns socialistas, como H.G. Wells na Inglaterra.
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Quando retornou aos EUA após quatro meses, encontrou os radicais Upton Sinclair, John Dewey e Walter Lippmann. Lippmann, novo editor da New Republic, escreveu, em dezembro de 1914, um ensaio: "O Legendário John Reed." Ele definiu a distância entre ele próprio e Reed. "Por temperamento, ele não é um escritor profissional ou repórter. Ele é uma pessoa que gosta de si mesmo." E então Lippmann desferiu o último golpe: "Reed não é imparcial e tem orgulho disso."
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Reed voltou para a guerra em 1915, dessa vez para a Rússia, para as vilas queimadas e saqueadas, para o masacre dos judeus pelos soldados do tsar, para Bucareste, Constantinopla, Sofia, depois Sérvia e Grécia. De volta aos EUA, escutou os incessantes discursos sobre os preparativos militares contra "o inimigo," e escreveu para o The Masses que o inimigo para o trabalhador estadunidense eram os 2% da população que recebiam 60% da riqueza nacional. "Nós defendemos que o trabalhador prepare-se para se defender do inimigo. Esse é o nosso preparativo."
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Mais tarde, em 1916, John Reed conheceu Louise Bryant em Portland e apaixonaram-se imediatamente. Ela se separou de seu marido e foi morar com Reed em Nova Iorque. Ela era escritora e uma anarquista inconseqüente. Naquele verão, Reed pediu respeito aos sons da guerra nas calmas praias de Provincetown, com Bryant. Há uma fotografia dela deitada na areia, nua e reservada.
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Em abril de 1917, Woodrow Wilson pediu que o Congresso declarasse guerra à Alemanha. E John Reed escreveu no The Masses: "A guerra significa histeria coletiva, crucificando os defensores da verdade, sufocando os artistas… Esta não é nossa guerra." Ele testemunhou contra o recrutamento perante o Congresso: "Eu não acredito nesta guerra… Eu não serviria nela."
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Quando Emma Goldman e Alexander Berkman foram capturados pelo Draft Act por "conspiração e indução de pessoas a não se registrarem" Reed foi uma testemunha de defesa. Eles foram condenados e presos. Isso aconteceu a milhares de outros estadunidenses que se opuseram à guerra. Os jornais radicais foram banidos, entre eles o The Masses.
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Reed afligiu-se pelo modo através do qual as classes trabalhadoras na Europa e EUA estavam sustentando a guerra. Ele continuou a esperar: "Eu não posso desistir da idéia de que fora da democracia nascerá o rico do novo mundo, o desbravador, o libertador, mais bonito."

  Comunismo

John Reed era uma figura importante no Partido Socialista nos EUA, sendo determinante para a fundação do Partido Comunista dos Trabalhadores. Esse partido era ilegal e era apenas um de dos partidos que disputavam o apoio do recentemente fundado Communist International (Comintern).
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Em 1917, chegaram da Rússia notícias de que o Czar fora deposto. Uma revolução estava em marcha. "Finalmente, toda uma população se negou a continuar a carnificina e se revoltou contra a classe governante", pensou Reed.
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Com Louise Bryant, Reed partiu para a Finlândia e Petrogrado. A revolução avançava à sua volta, com operários a tomarem o poder nas fábricas, soldados recusando-se a combater e manifestando-se contra a guerra, e o soviete de Petrogrado a eleger uma maioria bolchevique. Por fim, a 6 e 7 de Novembro, houve a rápida tomada das estações ferroviárias, telégrafo, telefone e correios, e a concentração de trabalhadores e soldados junto ao Palácio de Inverno.
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Correndo de cena a cena, Reed tomou notas com uma velocidade incrível, reuniu cada folheto, poster e proclamação e, então, no início de 1918, voltou aos EUA para escrever sua história. Ao chegar, suas anotações foram confiscadas. Ele se encontrou sob acusação, juntamente com outros editores do The Masses, por se opor à guerra. Mas, no julgamento, onde ele e Eastman testemunharam sobre suas crenças, o júri não pode chegar a uma decisão e as acusações foram retiradas.
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Agora, Reed ia a todos os lugares do país, lecionando sobre a guerra, a Revolução Russa. No Tremont Temple, em Boston, ele foi bombardeado com perguntas por estudantes da Universidade de Harvard. Em Indiana, ele conheceu Eugene Debs, que seria logo setenciado a 10 anos por pregação contra a guerra. Em Chicago, ele acompanhou o julgamento de Bill Haywood e de outras centenas de líderes do IWW, que pegariam longas sentenças na prisão. Naquele setembro, depois de ter falado a uma platéia de quetro mil pessoas, Reed foi preso por desencorajamento ao recrutamento nas forças armadas.
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Finalmente, ele pegou de volta suas anotações sobre a Rússia e em dois meses fez uma produção escrita furiosa Os Dez Dias que Abalaram o Mundo. Esse tornou-se o relatório clássico de testemunha ocular da Revolução Bolchevique: "Acima do Nevsky, no amargo crepúsculo, as multidões estavam degladeando pelos últimos papéis… Em cada esquina, em cada lugar aberto, pequenos grupos foram aglomerados; soldados e estudantes discutiam… A Petrograd Soviet estava se reunindo continuamente em Smolny, um centro de tempestade, delegados dormindo no chão e levantando-se novamente para fazer parte do debate, Trotsky, Kamenev, Volodarsky falando 6, 8, 12 horas por dia…"
Em 1919, a guerra acabou, mas as forças Aliadas tinham invadido a Rússia e a histeria continuou nos EUA. O país que tinha feito a gloriosa "revolução" mundial, agora estava com medo dela. Os não-cidadãos foram encurralados aos milhares, presos e deportados sem julgamento. Houve greves por todo o país e choques com a polícia. Reed se envolveu na formação do Partido Comunista dos Trabalhadores, foi à Rússia como um delegado aos encontros da International Communista. Lá, ele conversou com os burocratas do partido, questionando o que estava acontecendo com a revolução. Ele encontrou Emma Goldman em Moscou e a escutou desabafar sua desilusão.
Ele correu de reunião a reunião, de uma conferência em Moscou a uma reunião em massa de asiáticos no Mar Negro. Ele estava se desgastando; ficou doente, febril e delirante. Era tifo. Em 1920, ele morreu em um hospital de Moscou.
O corpo de John Reed foi sepultado perto do Kremlin na Praça Vermelha, com honras de herói, sendo o único americano a quem tal honra foi concedida.
O filme Reds, estrelado por Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton e Jack Nicholson, foi baseado em sua vida e ganhou vários prêmios do Oscar.

Ligações externas



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John Reed (journalist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
For other persons of the same name, see John Reed.
John Reed

John Reed, American journalist
Born October 22, 1887(1887-10-22)
Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Died October 17, 1920 (aged 32)
Moscow, Russia
Occupation Journalist
Spouse(s) Louise Bryant
Signature
John Silas Reed (October 22, 1887 – October 17, 1920), often referred to by his nickname, Jack, was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist, remembered for his first-hand account of the Bolshevik Revolution, Ten Days that Shook the World. He was married to writer and feminist Louise Bryant.

Contents

 

Biography

Early life and education

John Reed was born on October 22, 1887, in his maternal grandmother's mansion in Portland, Oregon.[1] His mother, Margaret Green Reed, was the daughter of a leading Portland citizen who had made a fortune through three enterprises: as owner the first gas works in Oregon, owner of the first pig iron smelter on the west coast, and as second owner of the Portland water works.[2] John's father, Charles Jerome Reed, was the representative of an agricultural machinery manufacturer who had come to town from the East. With his ready wit, he quickly won acceptance in Portland’s business community.[3] His parents were married in 1886.
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Young John, universally called "Jack" by those who knew him, grew up surrounded by nurses and servants, his upper-class playmates carefully selected. He had a brother, Harry, two years his junior.[4] A sickly child, Jack and his brother were sent to the recently-established Portland Academy, a private school.[5] Jack was bright enough to pass his courses but could not be bothered to work for top marks, as he found book-learning dry and tedious.[6] In September 1904, Jack was sent to Morristown School in New Jersey to prepare for college as his father had never attended a university and wanted his sons to go to Harvard.[7] At this prep school, Jack continued his track record of poor classroom performance, although he did make the football team and showed literary promise.[8]
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John Reed failed in his first attempt on the admission exam but passed on his second try and in the fall of 1906 he entered Harvard College, one of the most elite universities in America.[9] Tall, handsome, and light-hearted, Jack threw himself into all manner of student activities. He was a member of the cheerleading team, the swimming team, and the dramatic club. He served on the editorial boards of the Lampoon and the Harvard Monthly and as president of the Harvard Glee Club. He wrote a play produced by the Hasty Pudding Club, and was made ivy orator and poet. Jack tried and failed to make the Harvard teams for football and crew, but he participated and excelled in other competitive sports of lesser prestige, such as swimming and water polo.[10]
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Jack also attended meetings of the Socialist Club, over which his friend Walter Lippmann presided, but he never joined. Still, the club left its impact on his psyche. The group had social legislation introduced into the state legislature, attacked the university for failing to pay its servants living wages, and petitioned the administration for the establishment of a course in Socialism.[11] Reed later recalled:
"All this made no ostensible difference in the look of Harvard society, and probably the club-men and the athletes, who represented us to the world, never even heard of it. But it made me, and many others, realize that there was something going on in the dull outside world more thrilling than college activities, and turned our attention to the writings of men like H.G. Wells and Graham Wallas, wrenching us away from the Oscar Wildian dilettantism which had possessed undergraduate litterateurs for generations."[12]
Reed graduated from Harvard College in 1910, and that summer he set out to see more of the "dull outside world," visiting England, France, and Spain before returning home to America the following spring.[13]

 Bohemian journalist

John Reed had determined to become a journalist and he set out to make his mark in the big city in which that industry was based, New York. Jack made use of a valuable contact he had made at Harvard, the muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens. Steffens, who appreciated Reed's skills and intellect at an early date. Steffens landed his young admirer a position on the American Magazine in an entry-level position, reading manuscripts, correcting proof, and later helping with the composition. Reed supplemented his insufficient salary by taking an additional job as the business manager of a new short-lived quarterly magazine called Landscape Architecture.[14]
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Reed made his home in Greenwich Village, a burgeoning hub of poets and artists. He came to love New York, relentlessly exploring it and writing poems about it. His formal jobs on the magazines paid the rent, but it was as a freelance journalist that Jack sought to establish himself. He collected rejection slips circulating an essay and short stories about his six months in Europe, eventually breaking through in The Saturday Evening Post. Within a year, Reed had work other accepted by Collier's, The Forum, and The Century Magazine. One of his poems had been set to music by composer Arthur Foote, and the editors at The American had come to see him as a contributor and begun to publish his work.[15] John Reed was a young man on the rise.
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His serious interest in social problems was first aroused, at about this time, by Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell, and once aroused it quickly led him to a far more radical position than theirs. In 1913 he joined the staff of The Masses, edited by Max Eastman and his sister Crystal. To this publication Jack contributed more than 50 articles, reviews, and shorter pieces.
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The first of Reed's many arrests came in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1913, for attempting to speak on behalf of strikers in the New Jersey silk mills. The harsh treatment meted out by the authorities to the strikers and a short jail term which followed further radicalized him. Jack allied himself with the syndicalist trade union the Industrial Workers of the World at this time.[16] Jack's account of his experiences appeared in June as an article "War in Paterson." During the same year, following a suggestion made by IWW leader Bill Haywood, Jack put on "The Pageant of the Paterson Strike" in Madison Square Garden as a benefit for the strikers.[17]
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In the autumn of 1913 John Reed was sent to Mexico by the Metropolitan Magazine to report the Mexican Revolution.[18] He shared the perils of Pancho Villa's army for four months, present when the Villa's Constitutional Army when it defeated Federal forces at Torreón, opening the way for its advance on Mexico City.[19] Reed's time with the Villistas resulted in a series of outstanding magazine articles that brought Jack a national reputation as a war correspondent. Reed deeply sympathized with the plight of the peons and vehemently opposed American intervention, which came shortly after he left. Jack adored Villa, while Carranza left him cold. Jack's Mexican reports were later republished in book form as Insurgent Mexico, which appeared in 1914.
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On April 30, 1914, John Reed arrived in Colorado, scene of the recent Ludlow massacre. There he spent a little more than a week and investigated the events, spoke on behalf of the miners, wrote an impassioned article on the subject ("The Colorado War", published in July), and came to believe much more deeply in class conflict.[20] That summer he spent in Provincetown, Massachusetts with Mabel Dodge and her son, putting together Insurgent Mexico and interviewing President Wilson on the subject. The resulting report, much watered down at White House insistence, was not a success.[21]

War correspondent

On August 14, 1914, shortly after Germany declared war on France, he set sail for neutral Italy, having been sent by the Metropolitan. He met his lover, Mabel Dodge, in Naples and the pair made their way to Paris. Reed saw the war as emerging from imperialist commercial rivalries and showed little sympathy for any of the participants. In an unsigned piece entitled "The Traders’ War," published in the September 1914 issue of The Masses, Jack passionately wrote:
"The real War, of which this sudden outburst of death and destruction is only an incident, began long ago. It has been raging for tens of years, but its battles have been so little advertised that they have been hardly noted. It is a clash of Traders...

"What has democracy to do in alliance with Nicholas, the Tsar? Is it Liberalism which is marching from the Petersburg of Father Gapon, from the Odessa of the pogroms?...

"No. There is a falling out among commercial rivals....

"We, who are Socialists, must hope — we may even expect — that out of this horror of bloodshed and dire destruction will come far-reaching social changes — and a long step forward towards our goal of Peace among Men.

"But we must not be duped by this editorial buncombe about Liberalism going forth to Holy War against Tyranny.

"This is not Our War."[22]
In France he was frustrated by wartime censorship and the difficulty of accessing the front. Reed and Dodge went to London and Dodge soon left for New York, to the relief of Reed. The rest of 1914 he spent drinking with French prostitutes, and pursuing an affair with a German woman.[23] The pair went to Berlin in early December. While there Jack interviewed Karl Liebknecht, who was one of the few socialists in Germany to vote against war credits. Reed was deeply disappointed by the general collapse in working-class solidarity promised by the Second International, and by its replacement with militarism and nationalism.[24]
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He returned to New York in the middle of that month and occupied himself writing about the war. A return to Eastern Europe followed in 1915, a journey on which he was accompanied by Canadian artist and frequent Masses contributor Boardman Robinson. Traveling from Thessaloniki, they met scenes of profound devastation in Serbia (including a bombed-out Belgrade), also going through Bulgaria and Romania. They passed through the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Bessarabia, and in Chełm they were arrested, incarcerated for several weeks and liable to be shot for espionage had not the American ambassador shown some interest.
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Jack Reed, circa 1917.
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Traveling to Russia, Reed was outraged to learn that the ambassador in Petrograd was inclined to believe they were spies. Reed and Robinson were re-arrested when they tried to slip into Romania. This time it was the British ambassador (Robinson being a British subject) who finally secured permission for them to leave, but not before all their papers were seized in Kiev. In Bucharest the duo spent time piecing together their journey, with Reed at one point traveling to Constantinople in hopes of seeing action at Gallipoli. These experiences led to Reed's book, The War in Eastern Europe, published in April 1916.
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After returning to New York, he paid a visit to his mother in Portland, where he met and fell in love with Louise Bryant, who joined him on the East coast in January 1916. Though happy, both had affairs with others rather freely, in accord with the bohemian sensibilities of sexual liberation in common currency in that day. Early in 1916 Reed met Eugene O'Neill, and beginning that May the three rented a cottage in Provincetown. Not long after, Bryant and O'Neill began a romance.[25]
That summer Reed donned his reporter's hat and covered the Presidential nominating conventions. Reed himself endorsed Woodrow Wilson, believing that he would make good on his promise to keep America out of the war.[26] The year proved an eventful one for Jack, highlighted by his November marriage to Louise Bryant in Peekskill and an operation to remove a kidney conducted at Johns Hopkins Hospital which forced his hospitalization until mid-December.[27] The operation fortuitously rendered him ineligible for conscription and saved him later from the fate of a conscientious objector. During 1916 he also published privately Tamburlaine and Other Poems in an edition of 500 copies.
As the country raced towards war, the radical Reed was marginalized: his relationship with the Metropolitan was over. Jack pawned his late father's watch and sold his Cape Cod cottage to birth control activist Margaret Sanger.[28] When Wilson asked for a declaration of war on April 2, 1917, Reed shouted at a hastily-convened meeting of the People's Council in Washington: "This is not my war, and I will not support it. This is not my war, and I will have nothing to do with it."[29] In July and August Reed continued to write aggressive articles for The Masses, which the Post Office now refused to mail, and for Seven Arts, which as a result of an article by Reed and one earlier in the summer by Randolph Bourne, had its financial backing cut off and ceased publication.[30] Reed was stunned by the nation's pro-war fervor and his career lay in ruins.
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He followed Pancho Villa and filmed most of his battles during the Mexican Revolution.

Witness to the Russian Revolution

On August 17, 1917, John Reed and Louise Bryant set sail from New York to Europe, having first provided the State Department with legally sworn assurances that either would represent the Socialist Party at a forthcoming conference in Stockholm.[31] The pair were going as working journalists to see for themselves and report upon the sensational developments taking place in the fledgling republic of Russia. Traveling by way of Finland, the pair arrived in the capital city of Petrograd immediately after the failed military coup of monarchist General Lavr Kornilov, an attempt to topple the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky by force of arms. Jack and Louise found the Russian economy was in shambles as several of the subject nationalities of the old empire, such as Finland and Ukraine, autonomous and seeking to forge a military accommodation with Germany.
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The cover of this 1919 British pamphlet emphasizes Reed's short-lived status as Soviet consul.
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John Reed and Louise Bryant wound up at ground zero for the October Revolution, in which the Russian Communist Party headed by Vladimir Lenin toppled the Kerensky government in what they believed to be the first blow struck in a worldwide socialist revolution.
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The food situation in the capital was dire. Jack later recalled:
The last month of the Kerensky regime was marked first by the falling off of the bread supply from 2 pounds a day to 1 pound, to half a pound, to a quarter of a pound, and, the final week, no bread at all. Holdups and crime increased to such an extent that you could hardly walk down the streets. The papers were full of it. Not only had the government broken down, but the municipal government had absolutely broken down. The city militia was quite disorganized and up in the air, and the street-cleaning apparatus and all that sort of thing had broken down — milk and everything of that sort."[32]
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A mood for radical change was in the air. The Bolsheviks, seeking an all-socialist government and immediate end to Russian participation in the war, sought the transfer of power from Kerensky to a Congress of Soviets, a gathering of elected workers' and and soldiers' deputies to be convened in October. The Kerensky government saw this as a clear effort to replace its own regime with another and moved to shut down the Bolshevik press, issuing warrants of arrest for the Soviet leaders and preparing to transfer the troops of the Petrograd garrison, believed to be unreliable, back to the front. A Military Revolutionary Committee of the Soviets, dominated by the Bolshevik Party, determined to seize power on behalf of the future Congress of Soviets and at 11 pm on the evening of November 7, 1917, it captured the Winter Palace, seat of Kerensky's government.[33] Reed and Bryant were present during the fall of the Winter Palace, the symbolic event which initiated the Bolshevik Revolution.[34]
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Jack was an enthusiastic supporter of the new revolutionary socialist government and he went to work for the new People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, translating decrees and news of the actions of the new government into English. "I also collaborated in the gathering of material and data and data and distributing of papers to go into the German trenches," Reed later recalled.[35]
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Jack was close to the inner circle of the new government. He met Leon Trotsky and was introduced to Lenin during a break of the Constituent Assembly on January 18, 1918. By December, his funds were nearly exhausted and he took employment with an American, Raymond Robbins of the Red Cross. Robbins wished to set up a newspaper promoting American interests; Reed complied, but in the dummy issue he prepared he included a warning beneath the masthead: "This paper is devoted to promoting the interests of American capital."[36]
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The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly left Reed unmoved, and two days later, armed with a rifle, he joined a patrol of Red Guards prepared to defend the Foreign Office from counter-revolutionary attack.[37] Reed then attended the opening of the Third Congress of Soviets, where he gave a short speech promising to bring the news of the revolution to America, where he hoped it would "call forth an answer from America's oppressed and exploited masses." American journalist Edgar Sisson told Reed that he was being used by the Bolsheviks for their propaganda, a rebuke he accepted.[37] In January, Trotsky, responding to Reed's concern about the safety of his substantial archive, offered Reed the post of Soviet Consul in New York; as the United States did not recognize the Bolshevik government, his credentials would almost certainly have been rejected and he faced prison (which would have given the Bolsheviks some propaganda material). The appointment was viewed as a massive blunder by most Americans in Petrograd, and the businessman Alex Gumberg directly approached Lenin, showing him a prospectus in which Reed called for massive American capital support for Russia and for the setting up of a newspaper to express the American viewpoint on the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk. Lenin found the proposal unsavory and withdrew the nomination; thereafter, Reed only mentioned Gumberg's name with a string of epithets attached.[38]
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Both Jack and Louise netted books from their Russian experiences, with Louise's Six Red Months in Russia appearing first and Jack's 10 Days That Shook the World, published early in 1919, garnering the most notice.
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While Louise had made her way home to the United States in January 1918, Jack did not reach New York City until April 28, 1918.[39] On his way back to the USA Reed traveled from Russia to Finland;he didn't have a visa or passport while crossing to Finland. In Turku harbor when Reed was on boarding a ship on his way to Stockholm Finnish police arrested Reed and took him to Kakola prison in Turku until he was released. From Finland Reed traveled to Kristiania, Norway via Stockholm. Because he remained under indictment in the Masses case, Jack was immediately met by federal authorities, who held him on board his ship for more than 8 hours while they searched his belongings. Reeds irreplaceable papers were seized, the raw material from which he intended to write his book, and he was released upon his own recognizance after his attorney, Morris Hillquit, promised to make him available at the Federal Building the next day.[40] His papers were not returned to him until November 1918.

Radical political activist

Back in America, Jack and Louise took pains to defend the Bolsheviks and oppose American intervention, but a hyper-patriotic public incensed at Russia's departure from the war gave him a generally cold reception. While he was in Russia, his articles in The Masses and particularly a headline, "Knit a straight-jacket for your soldier boy", had been largely instrumental in bringing an indictment against that magazine for sedition. The first Masses trial ended the day before he arrived in a hung jury; the defendants, including himself, were to be retried, so after returning, he immediately posted $2,000 bail on April 29.[41]
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Cover of Reed's Voice of Labor, October 1919.
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The second Masses trial also ended in a hung jury. In Philadelphia, he stood outside a closed hall on May 31, harangued a crowd of 1,000 until police dragged him away, was charged with inciting a riot, and posted $5,000 bail. He was now more aggressively political, intolerant, and self-destructive;[42] his third arrest since his return from Russia came on September 14, when he was charged with violating the Sedition Act and freed on $5,000 bail. This was a day after possibly the largest demonstration for Bolshevik Russia held in the United States (in The Bronx), when Reed passionately defended the revolution, which he seemed to think was coming to America as well.[43] He tried to prevent Allied intervention, arguing that the Russians were contributing to the war effort by checking German ambitions in the Ukraine and Japanese designs on Siberia, but this came to naught.[44]
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On February 21-22, 1919, Bryant was fiercely grilled before a Senate committee exploring Bolshevik propaganda activities in the US, but emerged resilient; Reed followed on the 22nd, delivering quick, subtle testimony which was, however, savagely distorted by the press.[45] Later that day he went to Philadelphia to stand trial for his May speech; despite a hostile judge, press, and patriotic speech by the prosecutor, Reed's lawyer convinced the jury the case was about free speech, and he was acquitted.[45] Returning to New York, Reed continued speaking widely and participating in the various twists of socialist politics that year. He served as editor of The New York Communist, the weekly newspaper issued by the Left Wing Section of Greater New York.
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Affiliated with the Left Wing of the Socialist Party, Reed with the other radicals was expelled from the National Socialist Convention in Chicago on August 30, 1919. The radicals then split into two bitterly hostile groups, forming the Communist Labor Party (Reed's, in the creation of which he had been indispensable) and, the next day, the Communist Party of America. Reed was the international delegate of the former, wrote its manifesto and platform, edited its paper, The Voice of Labor, and was denounced as "Jack the Liar" in the Communist Party organ, The Communist. Reed's writings from 1919 display doubts about Western-style democracy and defend the dictatorship of the proletariat, which he saw as a necessary step that would prefigure the true democracy "based upon equality and the liberty of the individual."[46]

Comintern functionary

Cover of the 1922 German edition of 10 Days That Shook The World, published by the Comintern in Hamburg.
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Indicted for sedition and hoping to secure Comintern backing for the CLP, he escaped from America in early October on board a Scandinavian frigate by means of a forged passport, working his way to Bergen as a stoker. Given shore leave, he disappeared to Kristiania, crossed into Sweden on October 22, passed through Finland and made his way to Moscow by train. In the cold winter of 1919-1920, he traveled in the region around Moscow, observing factories, communes, and villages; filling notebooks; and carrying on an affair with a Russian woman.[47] 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.[48]
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Reed, although facing the threat of arrest in Illinois, tried to return to home after February 1920. At that time, the Soviets organized a convention to establish a United Communist Party of America.[49] Reed attempted to leave Russia through Latvia that month, but his train never arrived forcing him to hitch a ride in the boxcar of an eastbound military train to Petrograd.[50] In March, he crossed into Helsinki, where he had radical friends, including a future politician and SDKL member of parliament Hella Wuolijoki, and, with their help,was hidden in the hold of a freighter. On the 13th, customs officials finally found him in a coal bunker. He was taken to the police station, where he maintained that he was the seaman "Jim Gormley." Eventually, the jewels, photographs, letters, and fake documents he had in his possession forced him to reveal his true identity. Although beaten several times and threatened with torture, he refused, however, to surrender the names of his local contacts. As a result of his silence, he was not able to be tried for treason, and was instead convicted of smuggling and having jewels in his possession (102 small diamonds worth $14,000, which were confiscated).
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The US Secretary of State was satisfied with Reed's arrest and pressured the Finns for his papers. American authorities, however, remained indifferent to Reed's fate.[51] Although Reed paid the fine for smuggling, he was still detained illegally, and his physical condition and state of mind deteriorated rapidly. He suffered from depression and insomnia, wrote alarming letters to Bryant, and threatened a hunger strike on May 18.[52] He was finally released in early June, and sailed for Tallinn on the 5th. Two days later, he traveled to Petrograd, recuperating from malnourishment and scurvy caused by having been fed dried fish almost exclusively, but his spirits were high.[53]
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At the end of June, he traveled to Moscow and, after discussing with Bryant the possibility of her joining him, she gained passage on a Swedish tramp steamer and arrived in Gothenburg on August 10.[53] At the same time, Reed attended the second Comintern congress. Although his mood was as jovial and boisterous as ever, his physical appearance had deteriorated; he was quite thin, seemed weak and was sallow and his face lined.[54]
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During this congress, he bitterly objected to the deference other revolutionaries showed to the Russians, who assumed the tide of revolutionary fervor was ebbing making it necessary for the communist party to work within the existing institutions – a policy Reed felt would be disastrous.[55] He was contemptuous of the bullying tactics displayed during the congress by Karl Radek and Grigory Zinoviev, who ordered Reed to attend the Congress of the Peoples of the East to be held at Baku on August 15.
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It was a long journey, five days by train through countryside devastated by civil war and infected by typhus. Reed was reluctant to go and asked to arrive later, as he had planned to go first to Petrograd, where Bryant was traveling from Murmansk. Zinoviev insisted Reed take the official train: "the Comintern has made a decision. Obey." Reed would normally have rebelled at being spoken to with such contempt, but he needed Soviet good-will at the moment and was not prepared for a final break with the Comintern, so he made the trip with great reluctance.[56] Reed's actions and feelings during this time are a matter of speculation, but years after abandoning Communism, his friend Benjamin Gitlow asserted that the treatment Reed received from Zinoviev filled Reed with bitter disillusionment for the Communist movement.[57]
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During his time in Baku, Reed received a telegram announcing Bryant's arrival in Moscow. He followed her there, arriving on September 15, and was able to tell her of the events of the preceding eight months. He appeared older and his clothes were in tatters. While in Moscow, he took her to meet Lenin, Trotsky, Lev Kamenev, and other leading Bolsheviks and also to visit Moscow's ballet and art galleries.

Death and legacy

John Reed's body lying in state, Moscow 1920
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Reed was determined to return home, but fell ill on September 25. At first diagnosed with influenza, he was hospitalized five days later and was found to have spotted typhus. Bryant spent all her time with him, but there were no medicines to be obtained because of the Allied blockade. His mind started to wander, and then he lost the use of the right side of his body and could no longer speak. His wife was holding his hand when he died in Moscow on October 17, 1920.[58] After a hero's funeral, his body was buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
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The uses of John Reed as a symbol in popular culture have been varied. Some have dismissed him as a "romantic revolutionary" and a "playboy" — a vapid dilettante pretending to profess revolutionary sensibilities. For the Communist movement to which he belonged, Reed became a symbol of the international nature of the Bolshevik revolution, a martyr buried at the Kremlin wall amidst solemn fanfare, his name to be uttered reverently as a member of the radical pantheon.[59] Others, such as his old friend and comrade Benjamin Gitlow, made the claim that Reed had begun to shun the bureaucracy and violence of Soviet Communism late in his life and have thus sought to posthumously enlist Reed in their own anti-communist cause.
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John Reed has also been an influence upon the cinema. Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein's influential 1927 silent film October: Ten Days That Shook the World was based on Reed's book.
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Half a century later, the 1981 film Reds, based upon the life of John Reed, was made. Warren Beatty starred as Reed, while Diane Keaton played the part of Louise Bryant and Jack Nicholson that of Eugene O'Neill. The movie won three Academy Awards, and was nominated for nine others. Other film portrayals of Reed include the 1982 two-part Soviet production Red Bells, starring Franco Nero; and the 1973 film Reed: Mexico Insurgente, based on his accounts of the Mexican Revolution.
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A persistent urban legend exists that John Reed came from the family for which Reed College, an elite liberal arts school located in Portland, was named. Despite the college's reputation for leftist politics, there is no truth to this rumor.[1] [2]

 Bibliography

  • Insurgent Mexico. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1914.
  • The War in Eastern Europe. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916.
  • Tamburlaine and Other Verses. Riverside, CT: Hillacre, 1917.
  • Ten Days that Shook the World. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1919.
  • Red Russia: The Triumph of the Bolsheviki. London: Workers Socialist Federation, 1919. —pamphlet collecting journallism from The Liberator.
  • Daughter of the Revolution and Other Stories. Floyd Dell, ed. New York: Vanguard Press, 1927.

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ Granville Hicks with John Stuart, John Reed: The Making of a Revolutionary. New York: Macmillan, 1936. Page 1.
  2. ^ Hicks with Stuart, John Reed, pg. 2.
  3. ^ Eric Homberger, John Reed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. Pages 7-8. Note that the family's wealth came from the Green side of the family, not the Eastern-transplanted Reed side.
  4. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 8.
  5. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 9
  6. ^ Hicks with Stuart, John Reed, pg. 7.
  7. ^ Michael Munk,, John Reed, marxists.org. Accessed November 4, 2007.
  8. ^ Hornberger, John Reed, pg. 12.
  9. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 15.
  10. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 16.
  11. ^ Hicks with Stuart, John Reed, page 33.
  12. ^ Quoted in Hicks with Stuart, John Reed, pg. 33.
  13. ^ Hicks with Stuart, John Reed, pg. 51.
  14. ^ Hicks with Stuart, John Reed, pg. 65.
  15. ^ Hicks with Stuart, John Reed, pg. 66.
  16. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 49.
  17. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 49.
  18. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 55.
  19. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 69.
  20. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pp. 75-76.
  21. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 79.
  22. ^ John Reed, "The Trader's War," The Masses, v. 5, no. 12, whole no. 40 (Sept. 1914), pp. 16-17. The article appears without a byline, attributed to "a well-known American author and war correspondent who is compelled by arrangements with another publication to withhold his name."
  23. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 87.
  24. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 89.
  25. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 114.
  26. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pp. 112-116.
  27. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 118.
  28. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 120.
  29. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pg. 122.
  30. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pp. 128-129.
  31. ^ Testimony of John Reed, Brewing and Liquor Interests and German and Bolshevik Propaganda: Report and Hearings of the Subcommittee on the Judiciary, United States Senate..., vol 3. pg. 563. Hereafter: Overman Committee Report, v. 3.
  32. ^ Testimony of John Reed, Overman Committee Report, v. 3, pg. 575.
  33. ^ Testimony of John Reed, Overman Committee Report, v. 3, pg. 569.
  34. ^ Testimony of John Reed, Overman Committee Report, v. 3, pg. 570.
  35. ^ Testimony of John Reed, Overman Committee Report, v. 3, pg. 565.
  36. ^ Homberger, John Reed, pp. 159-60
  37. ^ a b Homberger, p. 161
  38. ^ Homberger, pp. 161-3
  39. ^ Hicks with Stuart, John Reed, pg. 303.
  40. ^ Hicks with Stuart, John Reed, pg. 303.
  41. ^ Homberger, p. 167
  42. ^ Homberger, p. 172
  43. ^ Homberger, p. 174
  44. ^ Homberger, p. 171
  45. ^ a b Homberger, p. 180
  46. ^ Homberger, pp. 191-3
  47. ^ Homberger, p. 210
  48. ^ Homberger, pp. 202-3
  49. ^ Homberger, pp. 203-4
  50. ^ Homberger, p. 204
  51. ^ Homberger, pp. 205-6
  52. ^ Homberger, p. 206
  53. ^ a b Homberger, p. 207
  54. ^ Homberger, pp. 207-8
  55. ^ Homberger, p. 208
  56. ^ Homberger, pp. 212-3
  57. ^ Homberger, p. 214
  58. ^ Homberger, p. 215
  59. ^ By the 1930s, literary John Reed Clubs, affiliated with the Communist Party, existed in his honor in many large cities of the United States.

  Further reading

  • Hicks, Granville with John Stuart, John Reed: The Making of a Revolutionary. New York: Macmillan, 1936.
  • Homberger, Eric, John Reed: Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.
  • Homberger, Eric and John Biggart (eds.), John Reed and the Russian Revolution: Uncollected Articles, Letters and Speeches on Russia, 1917-1920. Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 1992.
  • Rosenstone, Robert A. Romantic Revolutionary: A biography of John Reed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

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