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Ten days that Shook the World (Penguin Classics)

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This is from George Orwell's proposed preface to "Animal Farm":

"At the death of John Reed, the author of 'Ten Days that Shook the World' -- a first-hand account of the early days of the Russian Revolution -- the copyright of the book passed into he hands of the British Communist Party, to whom I believe Reed had bequeathed it. Some years later the British Communists, having destroyed the original edition of the book as completely as they could, issued a garbled version from which they had eliminated mentions of Trotsky and also omitted the introduction written by Lenin."

Don't worry, though. This Penguin Classics edition is the version of Reed's book as originally issued, with all the Trotsky references and even Lenin's preface intact.

A fascinating, dramatic historical document penned by John

Reed of the Russian Bolshevik revolution. Skip

the totally unnecessary revisionist introduction written by

A.J.P. Taylor in the Penquin paperback edition added

gratuitously in 1977 and enjoy this masterful work.

A valuable and detailed account of the events during a few days in October/November 1917 when the communists wrestled power from the Kerensky provisional government. American John Reed was as naive as the Russian common man who joined the then populist Communist movement believing that it was well-intentioned and would govern compassionately. At its very beginning when Reed was involved the Communist regime had not yet exposed its brutal inhuman side. What Reed witnessed was the intense maneuvering that occurred as Kerensky attempted to retain power and Lenin/Trotsky countered by setting up a shadow organization that finally prevailed by getting the support of a military that was in mutiny over the continuation of the WWI. Even today Reed's account of the maneuvering during the final days of the Kerensky government is considered the most detailed and accurate. However, it should be noted that the communists destroyed most other accounts of this period because they were not favorable to the communists.

The description above says the author provided a dispassionate observation of the Bolshevik revolution. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Author Reed was the most famous American socialist of his time and he very lovingly describes the actions of the Bolsheviks and their leaders. Lenin and Trotsky are regularly praised and positioned as messianic figures for the working class.

Those facts notwithstanding the book is a good historical account of what happened during that fateful time that would eventually culminate in a battle for the world's dominant political ideology. From the very beginning the Bolsheviks denied individual rights and cherished freedoms thinking this sort of revolution was inevitable and would eventually happen around the world as Marx said.

I wonder what the USSR would have ended up like had Lenin lived longer without Stalin ruling with an iron fist. I'm sure the end result would still have been a huge nation of oppressed people but would the nuclear standoff with America have come about?

As a piece of writing, this book is excellent. I wish I could write as well as Reed does in this book. Reed was obviously a very good journalist and that stands out in this book, even if his fervent bias toward the Bolsheviks is evident.

The book covers the weeks after the November 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power but also devotes some coverage to the events leading up to that revolution. The immediate background to that revolution was the revolution of March 1917. The latter revolution overthrew the Czar and set up a provisional government for Russia. The March revolution also saw the rise of the Soviets, local councils of workers, peasants and soldiers established in virtually every locality in Russia. National bodies for the different types of Soviets (workers, soldiers, etc.) existed as did a general Congress of Soviets. The Soviets existed alongside other local government bodies--Zemstvos and Dumas--that were created during the Czar's time. The Russian masses--overwhelmingly peasants--wanted the redistribution of feudal land to themselves and the ending of Russia's involvement in World War I. Russia's involvement in World War I drained Russia's resources to such an extent that the country was on the verge of complete collapse. But the provisional government insisted on carrying on Russia's involvement in the war, as food shortages, death of soldiers and chaos reached catastrophic levels. After a few months, the provisional government fell under the influence of moderate socialists who believed that not only did Russia need to continue its involvement in World War one but that the country was not ready for a socialist revolution. In accordance with their understanding of Marxist theory, they believed Russia first needed to transform itself from a largely agrarian economy and feudal despotism to an advanced bourgeois economy and democracy before any socialist revolution could take place. The socialists in the provisional government governed in coalition with bourgeois elements who blocked the implementation of the March revolution's stated goals, including the distribution of feudal lands to peasant ownership.

The Bolsheviks decided to seize power from the provisional government in November 1917, calling a new general congress of Soviets, which backed the Party's decision. Unlike the moderate socialists in the provisional government, the Bolsheviks promised an immediate socialist revolution. They promised that workers and peasants would directly control the economic life of the country through the soviets. They promised that Russia would withdrawal from World War I, that feudal land would be redistributed to the peasants and that economic oppression would end in the country.

Reed uses superb power of description to describe the initial weeks of the revolution. He describes the tension as the Bolsheviks had to do battle with anti-Bolshevik military forces, including that assembled by Kerensky, the Menshevik socialist who was the last head of the provisional government. He describes the undercurrent of panic as Bolshevik officials tried to figure out how to run the levers of government.

Reed does provide large space for the point of view of anti-Bolshevik elements. Many proclamations of the opposition are included in the book's appendix. One of the interesting issues discussed in the book is the views on freedom of the press of the Bolsheviks and the critics of those views in the 2nd All Russian Congress of Soviets.

The implication of the book is that the poor majority of Russians were on the side of the Bolsheviks. One can understand how this would be true. The Bolsheviks promised that Russia's economy would be managed directly by workers and peasants through the soviets. As presented in this book, the libertarian socialist rhetoric of the Bolsheviks is inspiring. However, this inspiration is dampened by the knowledge that the Bolsheviks discarded libertarian socialist principles not long after the timeframe covered by this book. They set up a highly centralized dictatorship over economic and political life while depriving the soviets of real power. They justified the imposition of this dictatorship on national security grounds (the civil war, the invasion of the imperialist countries, etc.) as well as the notion that genuine socialist democracy could not survive in Russia without the security provided by socialist revolutions in Western Europe. The debate between anarchists and Leninists over the events of 1917-23 in Russia is certainly very interesting.

Reed apparently had no substantial disagreement with the establishment of the Bolshevik dictatorship. He kept working for the Bolsheviks until he died of Typhus in Russia in 1920 and was buried at the Kremlin wall.

One wonders if Reed, had he lived, would have gone along with Stalin's dictatorship, followed Trotsky or perhaps abandoned radical leftist politics altogether and become pro-capitalist.