John Reed and the Russian Revolution: Uncollected Articles, Letters and Speeches on Russia, 1917–1920

340 Pages·1992·30.27 MB·English

by  Eric Homberger

JOHN REED AND THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
Also by Eric Homberger
JOHN REED
* AMERICAN WRITERS AND RADICAL POLITICS, 190~1939
JOHN LE CARRE
THE ART OF THE REAL: POETRY IN ENGLAND AND
AMERICA SINCE 1939
EZRA POUND: THE CRITICAL HERITAGE (editor)
* THE TROUBLED FACE OF BIOGRAPHY (editor with
John Charmley)
THE CAMBRIDGE MIND (editor with Simon Schama and
William Janeway)
* THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN FICTION (editor with
Holger Klein and John Flower)
* Also published by Macmillan
John Reed and the
Russian Revolution
Uncollected Articles, Letters and
Speeches on Russia, 1917-1920
Edited by
ERIC HaMBERGER
Visiting Professor of American Studies
University of New Hampshire
with
JOHN BIGGART
Lecturer in Russian History
University of East Anglia
M
MACMILLAN
ISBN 978-1-349-21838-7 ISBN 978-1-349-21836-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21836-3
Editorial matter and selection © Eric Hornberger and John Biggart 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1992 978-0-333-53346-8
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or
transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with
the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988,
or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying
issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place,
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages.
First published 1992
Published by
MACMILLAN ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Reed, John, 1887-1920
John Reed and the Russian revolution: uncollected
articles, letters and speeches on Russia, 1917-1920.
1. Russian revolution, 1917
I. Title II. Hornberger, Eric III. Biggart, John
947.0841
ISBN 978-0-333-53346-8
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction ix
Editorial Note xx
Glossary and Key to Abbreviations xxii
Part I 1917
Chronology: John Reed in 1917 3
1 The Fall of the Russian Bastille 7
2 Russia 13
3 The Russian Peace [written with Louise Bryant] 17
4 A Letter from John Reed 19
5 Letter to Sally Robinson 23
6 Letter to Boardman Robinson 26
7 A Visit to the Russian Army 28
8 Letter to Boardman Robinson 59
9 Red Russia: Kerensky, I 63
10 John Reed Cables the Call News of the Bolshevik
Revolt 69
11 Red Russia: The Triumph of the Bolsheviki 74
12 Red Russia: Kerensky, II 96
Part II 1918
Chronology: John Reed in 1918 101
13 The Origins of Workers' Control in Russia 104
14 Two Manuscripts on the Revolution 110
I Introduction [to a Book] 110
II Fragment: 'History of the Rev.' 118
15 Bolsheviki Foes of All Imperialism 130
16 A Lecture on Conditions in Russia 136
v
vi Contents
17 A Message to Our Readers from John Reed Who
Has Just Returned from Petrograd 139
18 'Foreign Affairs' 144
19 Revolutionary Controversies 152
I Norman Hapgood and Socialist Journalism 152
II Letter to Upton Sinclair on Maxim Gorky 159
20 The Case for the Bolsheviki 163
21 'Kerensky is Coming!' 169
22 Memorandum to Colonel House on Intervention in
Russia 185
23 Address to the Jacob Schwartz Memorial Meeting 196
24 Letter to Upton Sinclair 199
25 The Second Day 204
26 The Constituent Assembly in Russia 210
27 They Are Still There! 221
Part III 1919-20
Chronology: John Reed in 1919-20 227
28 How Soviet Russia Conquered Imperial Germany 233
29 The Latest from Russia 246
30 Doctor Rakovsky 251
31 Prinkipo and After 253
32 Bolshevism: What It Is Not 258
33 Notebook Entries on an Interview with Trotsky 265
34 The Bolsheviks in 1919: Notebook Entries 267
35 Soviet Russia Now 268
Biographical Notes 281
Index 314
For Martin and Margaret, with love
Acknowledgements
Support for the work on this project came from the Research
Committee of the School of English and American Studies, Univer
sity of East Anglia. The kindness of Mr George Abbott White,
Keeper of the Matthiessen Room, Eliot House, Harvard Univer
sity, made research visits to Harvard a pleasure. Mr Corliss
Lamont and Dr Richard Abraham were kind enough to respond to
queries.
Permission to print the following manuscript material is hereby
acknowledged.
In the Edward M. House Papers, Yale University Library: Memor
andum by John Reed in Russia sent to Colonel House,
26 September 1918.
Material in the John Reed Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard
University, by permission of the Houghton Library.
Material in the Alexander Berkman Papers, Tamiment Library,
New York University, by permission of Tamiment Library.
Material in the Upton Sinclair Papers, Lilly Library, Indiana Uni
versity, Bloomington, Indiana, by permission of Lilly Library.
viii
Introduction
The present volume collects John Reed's articles, letters, tran
scripts of speeches, unpublished manuscripts and material from
his notebooks on the Russian Revolution. It complements Ten Days
that Shook the World (1919), Reed's contemporary account of the
Russian Revolution in 1917. When Reed and his wife, the writer
Louise Bryant, went to Russia, he was not an obvious candidate to
write the classic eyewitness account of the Revolution. Important
Western accounts of the Revolution, such as M. Philips Price's My
Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution (London, 1921) and Albert
Rhys Williams' Through the Russian Revolution (New York, 1921),
were written by correspondents better informed about events in
Russia than Reed, and who were more firmly in command of the
language; and indeed who were no less sympathetic to the Russian
people, no less engaged in the great drama of the Revolution. 1 Yet
his book has survived, to become part of the mythology of the
Revolution2 as well as a powerful impression of its actuality.
Reed was thirty years old in 1917, and had been a prominent
journalist since 1913. A romantic sympathizer with the down
trodden, his greatest professional success as a journalist came in
1914 when he was sent to Mexico by the Metropolitan Magazine to
cover the 'Constitutionalist' revolt against the tyrannical regime of
General Victoriano Huerta. The intervention of US military forces
in Mexico in 1914 made Reed's Insurgent Mexico necessary reading
for anyone concerned with the chaotic conditions south of the Rio
Grande into which President Wilson was being reluctantly drawn.
Reed spent weeks with Francisco Villa, the legendary guerrilla
fighter, and rode with La Tropa in the battle at the hacienda of La
Cadena; he interviewed the leader of the Constitutionalists,
Carranza, and witnessed the battle at Torre6n which opened the
way to Mexico City for the forces of Carranza. An article Reed
published in the New York Times in April 1914 was sent by Presi
dent Wilson to the US Ambassador in Great Britain, with a note
saying that Reed 'sums up as well as they could be summed up my
own conclusions with regard to the issues and personnel of the
pending contest in Mexico'. 3
The freedom of movement which he enjoyed as a war correspondent
ix