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Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed

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An epic tour-de-force which examines the fascinating life of John Reed, the only American to be buried in the Kremlin Wall. An ecclectic mix of personalities - from Lenin to Gertrude Stein, from Lincoln Steffens to Teddy Roosevelt - pass thru the tapestry which was Reed's life, each having their own unique impact on the art which remains. From his childhood in stoic Portland Oregon to his years in Harvard and New York to his coming of age in Mexico covering the Villa revolution, Reed absorbed experience and reflected his concept of justice and equality in his writing. Each stop along the way was preparation for Reed's ultimate mission - to report on the earth-shattering 1917 Russian Revolution. The book "Ten Days in October" is still the seminal work on the topic, and this book delves into the evolution of Reed from middle-class dabbler to full-blown Socialist commentator. Mr. Rosenstone does the man justice - well-documented, fair, and without overt "gushiness". An exceptional read.

The last full biography of Reed was published in 1967. The Lost Revolutionary was a Cold War attempt at character assassination. Apart from a psychoanalytical epilogue that dismisses his subject as naive, Rosenstone's account is remarkably fair. Reed, brought up in Babbit-style Oregon, was educated at Harvard and at 26 left Greenwich Village's burgeoning bohemia to cover the Mexican Revolution. His political awakening came just before he left for the land of Villa and Zapata, while covering a story on the Paterson silk strike. 'In Paterson,' writes the American biographer, 'Jack had smelled, tasted and felt the spirit of radicalism, and found it good.'

After Mexico and reporting from the Western Front, came romance in the shape of Louise Bryant the sole justification for the title of the book. All this time Reed was writing articles, plays and stories, but for all his worldly experience, they were mediocre against the work of contemporaries such as O'Neil, Yeats and Pound. Reed's greatness would be established by reportage published only a year before his burial at the foot of the Kremlin. Ten Days That Shook The World not only illuminates the trials of revolution, but also shows up the caprice of the winds of change.

This is the book the academy-award winning movie "Reds", starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton, was based on. An epic (but true)love story, you finish reading it in awe at how much life was packed by these people in such a short time.

John Reed, Harvard Class of 1910, epitomized the best of the pre-World War I bourgeois radicals. Unlike the vast majority of his Class and class he cast his fate with the working people and oppressed of America at a time when the dominant left bourgeois movement- the Progressive movement- was busy applying band aids to the increasingly inequitable capitalist system. The radical movement is always in need, sometimes desperately in need, of intellectuals to tell its side of the story. Despite some exceptions, like Reed, the intellectuals then, as now, either stood on the sidelines or at most acted as `fellow travelers' to the movement. Reed on the contrary put all his energies into the movement. As a journalist he sought out all the radical hotspots of his time starting with his coverage of the Mexican Revolution, through the various workers' strikes of the 1910's in America culminating in his coverage of the heroic period of the Russian Revolution. His journalistic account of the Bolshevik seizure of power, Ten Days That Shook the World, stands even today as one of the best eyewitness accounts of that turbulent time in Russia.

John Reed's political development also offers today's militant leftists an insight into how the swirl of events drives the best militants leftward. Reed started out in the typically Bohemian milieu of New York City's Greenwich Village and imbibed its avante guarde cultural offerings and its pretensions. However, as the United States lurched into participation into World War I he grew stronger as an anti-war advocate and placed himself on the line to oppose that war. This was the great dividing point in the radical movement of the time. This separated the dilettantes and mere reformists from serious revolutionaries. Not an unusual political development, but an important one.

Under the influence of the Russian Revolution Reed led the left wing of the American Socialist Party on a program of opposition to the war and defense of the Bolshevik Revolution. When the left wing was forced out of the Socialist Party he formed a communist organization based on the centrally of the native American working class as the vanguard of the American Revolution. Opposed to that were left-wingers, mainly foreign born elements based on the various language federations of the old Socialist Party, who essentially wanted to act as cheerleaders for the Russian Revolution-and no much else. The result was the creation of two communist organizations that caused no end of problems both in America and in the Communist International. But the fights to lead the Socialist party leftward and later between the communist organizations are stories for another time, and worth separate space. Read this book for starters.

John Reed is one of the great originals of early 20th century American history. Always struggling between his desire to be a poet and an evolving commitment to social transformation, Reed both typifies and transcends that glorious period before and after the First World War when a heady mix of sexual, political and artistic revolt defined a significant portion of the American intelligencia. If Reed's lover (and later wife) Louise Bryant was, as one biography terms her, the "Queen of Bohemia," Reed was its crown prince, its golden boy.

This biography captures well the mix of immaturity, turn-of-the-century boosterism, self-aggrandizement and revolutionary passion that made up Reed's character. (If you are a lover of the film "Reds," as I am, it also provides an interesting corrective to the film's loose handling of some of the facts of Reed's life.)

As the risk of seeming cynical, Reed's death at a young age and at the hight of his powers (he was buried at the Kremlin, one of only two Americans to receive this honor, the other being Bill Haywood of the I.W.W.), has preserved the legendary glamor of his life in a way that the subsequent careers of others of his Greenwich Village circle (including Bryant herself) did not. But, as one reads this book, it's difficult not to feel a certain nostalgic envy for Reed and his circle and their extraordinary times, despite the painful personal dramas they regularly put each other through.

This is an arresting biographical work, engagingly written and well-researched. Highly recommended.