John Reed

John Reed was an American journalist, poet, and socialist activist whose short life as a revolutionary writer made him the hero of a generation of radical intellectuals. A member of a wealthy Portland family, he graduated from Harvard and began writing for a Socialist newspaper, ‘The Masses’. He covered the revolutionary fighting in Mexico and recorded his impressions in his book, ‘Insurgent Mexico’. He was arrested frequently for organizing strikes, and his writings were considered seditious during World War I. He became established as a radical leader and helped form the Communist Party in the United States. He covered World War I for Metropolitan magazine; and wrote of his experience in the book, ‘The War in Eastern Europe’. He became a close friend of Lenin and was an eyewitness to the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, recording this event in his best known book, ‘Ten Days That Shook the World’. It was written from the perspective of someone experiencing the revolution first-hand and was sympathetic to the Bolsheviks and their cause. He portrayed their leaders – particularly Lenin, Trotsky and Zinoviev – in a favorable light. While attending the Second Congress of the Communist International in Moscow, he died of typhus; he was subsequently buried with other Bolshevik heroes beside the Kremlin wall.