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John Reed, 1887-1920
In 1913 journalist John Reed attracted national attention with his sympathetic articles on the Mexican Revolution. Later, as a foreign correspondent, he was fired for his fierce denunciations of World War I, a criminal offense under the Espionage Act of 1917. Reed then went to the Soviet Union, met with Lenin, and joined the regime's Bureau of Revolutionary Propaganda. On his return to America he wrote a dramatic eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution, Ten Days That Shook the World. It sold well and made him a national celebrity. In 1919 Reed organized the U.S. Communist Labor Party and later that year traveled to Moscow to gain the Soviet Union's recognition. Unable to return to the United States because of the Red Scare, he died in Moscow and is buried in the Kremlin. Reed was celebrated sixty years after his death in Warren Beatty's film Reds.
Pirie MacDonald, c 1916 |