Ten Days That Shook the World
 1919 Boni & Liveright hardback edition | |
| Author | John Reed |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | 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 first-hand. 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 the only American buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow, a site normally reserved only for the most prominent Soviet leaders.
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 on 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]
Critical response
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 hero of the Revolution and mentions Stalin only twice, and one of them being only in the recitation of a list of names. Consequently, Stalin banned Reed's book along with Trotsky's works.
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."[8]
On March 1, 1999, The New York Times reported[9] New York University's "Top 100 Journalism Works of Journalism" list,[10] which placed Ten Days that Shook the World at #7.[11] 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.[12]
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)[13]:
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
Notes and references
- ^ According to the Gregorian calendar, the October Revolution takes place in November.
- ^ a b c Reed, John (1990-02-07) [1919]. Ten Days that Shook the World (1st edition ed.). Penguin Classics. ISBN 0140182934.
{{cite book}}:|edition=has extra text (help); Check date values in:|date=(help); Unknown parameter|origmonth=ignored (help) - ^ Mott, Frank Luther (1941). American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 250 Years, 1690-1940. New York: The Macmillan Company.
- ^ Eastman, Max (1964). Love and Revolution: My Journey Through an Epoch. New York: Random House. pp. pp. 69-78.
{{cite book}}:|pages=has extra text (help) - ^ Gold, Michael (1940-10-22), "He Loved the People", The New Masses: pp. 8-11
{{citation}}:|pages=has extra text (help); Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ Duke, David C. (1987). John Reed. Boston: Twayne Publishers. pp. pp. 41. ISBN 0805775021.
{{cite book}}:|pages=has extra text (help) - ^ Eastman, Max (1942). Heroes I Have Known: Twelve Who Lived Great Lives. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. pp.223-4.
{{cite book}}:|pages=has extra text (help) - ^ Kennan, George Frost (1989) [1956]. Russia Leaves the War: Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920. Princeton University Press. pp. pp. 68-69. ISBN 0691008418.
{{cite book}}:|pages=has extra text (help) - ^ Barringer, Felicity (1999-03-01). "Journalism's Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century's Top Stories". Media. The New York Times. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
{{cite news}}: Check date values in:|date=(help) - ^ This list only includes works in the United States in the 20th Century.
- ^ "The Top 100 Works of Journalism". New York University. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
- ^ Stephens, Mitchell. "The Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century". New York University. Retrieved 2007-11-17.
- ^ Duke, David C. (1987). John Reed. Boston: Twayne Pulishers. ISBN 080575021.
{{cite book}}: Check|isbn=value: length (help)
See also
