Ten days that shook the world

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Cover of the first edition

Ten Days that Shook the World , in the original English version of Ten Days that Shook the World , is a novel by the American journalist and staunch socialist John Reed (1887–1920) about the October Revolution of 1917. Reed emphasizes in his foreword (January 1919 ), that he wants to enable the reader through conscientious journalistic work to trace the details "what happened in Petrograd in November 1917, what spirit inspired the people, what their leaders looked like, how they spoke and how they acted." Reed's preface offers a brief introduction to the Russian Revolution in its world-historical context.

The book, to which Lenin wrote a positive short foreword, appeared in 1919 and was later censored in the Russian edition by Stalin because of alleged sympathies for Leon Trotsky . With the book Reed became world famous. Reed describes the October Revolution and the fate of many other revolutionaries such as Grigori Zinoviev and Karl Radek , whom he knew personally and accompanied at the time.

International reception

A German translation of the book appeared in 1922 in the publishing house of the Communist International, Hamburg, and expanded in 1927 in the "Verlag für Literatur und Politik", Vienna and Berlin, with a foreword by the well-known journalist Egon Erwin Kisch .

George Orwell wrote in the proposed preface to the English edition of Animal Farm ( Animal Farm ) from 1945 that the Communist Party of Great Britain brought out an edition of the book, where Reed mentions of Trotsky and Lenin's preface were completely censored like.

The book was one of the works that were also burned as part of the Nazi book burnings campaign against the un-German spirit in 1933 .

A first edition in the GDR was published by Dietz Verlag , Berlin, in 1957 four years after Stalin's death.

The New York Times ranked the book at number 7 in 1999 out of the hundred most important journalistic works.

Film template

Grigori Alexandrow and Sergei Eisenstein created the script for the 1928 black and white silent film October based on the book . Ten days that shook the world (Russian: Октябрь / Десять дней, которые потрясли мир). The film disappeared into oblivion in the young Soviet Union because of the mention of Trotsky and other revolutionaries who were then regarded as non-persons. With the suggestive effect of its images, the script succeeded in reproducing the book in its own right.

Warren Beatty et al. a. in turn used Alexandrow's and Eisenstein's film for their 1981 production Reds - A Man Fights for Justice. as a template in parts.

Sergei Bondarchuk directed a two-part work Red Bells (1981–1983) about revolutions in Mexico and Russia. The first part is called Mexico in Flames and the second part I saw the birth of a new world . The latter is based on the book Reeds. Both are characterized by crowd scenes.

Book editions

Available book editions at:

  • John Reed: Ten Days that Shook the World. Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2011. 238 pages. English. ISBN 1463683979
  • John Reed: Ten days that shook the world. Translator Willi Schulz. Mehring, Essen, 2011. 273 pages. ISBN 3886340929

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Orwell, The Freedom of the Press, Orwell's Proposed Preface to 'Animal Farm', online at: orwell.ru/library , accessed December 5, 2010
  2. ^ Foreword in German, online at: www.marxists.org
  3. ↑ Felicity Barringer, Journalism's Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century's Top Stories , published in the New York Times on March 1, 1999, article text retrieved from the New York University website

Web links