Remembering John Reed

From the Soviet Press, 1962, a moving account of the great John Reed.

Yelizaveta Drabkina was only 16 years old when she took part in the October 1917 Revolution. She met and spoke to Lenin on many occasions. Her book Black Crusts, which is widely read in the Soviet Union, centers on the period. In 1961 she published The Story of an Unwritten Book, in which she describes John Reed's part in the Russian Revolution. She was a close friend of the American journalist.

REVOLUTIONARY PETROGRAD met a new personality toward the end of the summer of 1917, an unusual looking man who invariably attracted attention. Tall, with big bright eyes, he wore a soft shirt and khaki trousers, his collar always unbuttoned and his somewhat wavy hair disobediently rumpled. He moved effortlessly, with long steps . Always in a rush, he would suddenly stop short to look and listen to what was going on round him, his face showing his complete interest and attention.

Asked who he was, he would reply first in English. If the questioner did not understand, he would try French and German, and then, as a last resort, explain in broken Russian that he was John Reed, a correspondent of the American socialist press.

Reed arrived in revolutionary Russia half a year after the czar was over-thrown. The Provisional Government of the bourgeoisie and landlords, with its widely unpopular policy of continuing the imperialist war, was in power at the time.

John Reed would show up in the corridors of Smolny Institute, packed with workers, soldiers and sailors; or at the seat of the Provisional Government; or at meetings of the "Council of the Republic" when it was arguing how best to fight the revolution; or at meetings of workers of the Obukhovo Plant, where stronger revolutionary measures were being demanded.

He was listening in on both the revolution and the counterrevolution.

A week after arriving, Reed wrote to his friend, the artist Robinson, with whom he had made his first trip to Russia the year before, "The old town has changed! Joy where there was gloom, and gloom where there was joy. We are in the middle of things, and believe me, it's thrilling. There is so much dramatic to write about that I don't know where to begin...."

Reed was not only looking on, he was weighing, assessing, analyzing. He saw the treachery of the old social democracy and the plots of the gen-erals to suppress the revolution with fire and sword.

He had no doubt at all which of the contending sides was his. He awoke every morning with the hope that the rising day would bring with it the proletarian revolution.

Finally it came. He was in Smolny at the Second Congress of Soviets when Lenin appeared after his last stay underground. Reed heard the leader of the revolution calmly pronounce the electrifying words, "We shall now proceed to construct the socialist order!" He jumped to his feet, as did all present, and shouted his loud and joyful approval.

"Suddenly, by common impulse," he recalled later "we found ourselves on our feet, mumbling together into the smooth lifting unison of the Internationale. A grizzled old soldier was sobbing like a child.... The immense sound rolled through the hall, burst windows and doors and seared into the quiet sky. . . ."

John Reed told what he had seen. heard and learned in Ten Days That Shook the World because, he explained in the Preface. "Just as historians search the records for the minutest details of the story of the Paris Commune, so they will want to know what happened in Petrograd in November 1917, the spirit which animated the people, and how the leaders looked, talked and acted."

It was a masterful piece of writing. After reading Reed's account, Lenin said: "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 the real meaning of the proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat."

The book carries the author through the first ten days of the October Revolution, but it does not go with him to the eleventh, twelfth . . . the ninetieth day, when he left Soviet Russia to go back to the United States.

During the two and a half months he worked in the International Propaganda Department of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. He spent many nights in the print shop putting out leaflets on peace and an appeal to the soldiers of all nations. With Williams and other comrades he published a magazine with photos of Petrograd and Moscow during the October Revolution. And when a counterrevolutionary armed uprising was expected the day the Constituent Assembly met in Petrograd, he guarded the building of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs with rifle in hand.

In January 1918 he spoke at the Third Congress of Soviets of Workers', Soldiers and Peasants' Deputies. He told of his great hopes for the world now that the victory of the proletariat in Russia was a reality, no longer a dream. October, he said, showed the Revolution invincible. It would not be smashed no matter the repressions or cruelty of its enemies.

On his return to the United States Reed toured the country, from ocean to ocean, to give American audiences a true picture of the world's first workers and farmers' republic.

John Reed was an American by long ancestry. His forefathers came to the New World in 1607. One of them signed the Declaration of Independence, another served in George Washington's army, a third was a colonel in the Northern forces during the Civil War. But Reed was an American by more than birth. Devoted to America's ideals of democracy, he sympathized with the strivings of other people for freedom. He spoke out loud and clear for friendship between the United States and Soviet Russia.

In 1918-19 Reed played an active role in the workers movement in his own country. He was one of the founders of the Communist Party of the United States.

Toward the close of 1919 he took a job as stoker on a foreign ship and left for Soviet Russia again. This time he wanted to write a book about the republic after the Revolution. He moved in with a Petrograd worker's family, visited factories, kindergartens. theaters, spoke to hundreds of people on his travels through the country and filled many notebooks with his observations and comments.

He frequently called on Lenin in the Kremlin, and they talked about the new book. Lenin knew how poorly Reed was living and would always ask solicitously whether it was not too difficult for him to work under such conditions.

These are Reed's notebook comments on Lenin.

"Very changeable, and at the same time always very much himself."

"Quick movements, but without bustle. His precise economical gestures give the feeling of quickness."

"Lunschersky's story—the French sculptor Aronson, when he first saw Lenin, was astonished by his resemblance to Socrates—the same fine head, deep set eyes. and forehead that seems to radiate concentrated thought."

"Devoting his whole self to all! All! All!"

"Remarkable eyes, penetrating, kindly, shrewd and, above all, wise. Seem to be golden in sunlight."

"Scotch wish: 'May the chimney of your house smoke long.' Yes, may it smoke long, as long as possible. Millions of people are ready to give their lives so that the chimney of your house may smoke forever!"

Again and again Reed peered at the world that was being born before his eyes. In dispatches he sent to American revolutionary magazines he described Soviet Russia at the end of its third year of heroic struggle, how she had gone through "the great trials of the Revolution."

He concluded his story of the devastation and famine of the Civil War, the cold, typhus, the fierce battles, and of the springtime awakening of the country that was taking a deep breath after smashing the White Guard bands of Kolchak and Denikin, with these words, "And in spite of all that has happened, the Revolution lives, burns with a steady flame...."

In the fall of 1920 Reed went to Baku for the First Congress of the Peoples of the East. At the congress were representatives of the oppressed colonial countries and revolutionists from many lands. On the way back from Baku the train on which Reed was traveling was attacked by a counterrevolutionary band. He took part in the defense. It was hot and he drank from a stream near the railroad. Arriving in Moscow, he fell ill with typhus and died.

With other devoted fighters for the proletarian revolution, John Reed's ashes were buried in the Kremlin Wall near the Lenin Mausoleum.

Nadezhda Krupskaya, said in a conversation with Reed's widow, Louise Bryant, of Ten Days That Shook the World : "It seems almost a miracle that a foreigner could have written a book that conveyed the very spirit of the Revolution with such magic power."