Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed Books
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Covers the October Revolution in Russia 1917, which Reed experienced first-hand, and follows many of the prominent Bolshevik leaders, especially Zinoviev and Karl Radek. Banned by Stalin.Notice This Book is published by Historical Books Limited (www.publicdomain.org.uk) as a Public Domain Book, if you have any inquiries, requests or need any help you can just send an email to publications@publicdomain.org.uk This book is found as a public domain and free book based on various online catalogs, if you think there are any problems regard copyright issues please contact us immediately via DMCA@publicdomain.org.uk
Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed Books
There are countless reviews of this book out there. In short, it does an excellent job of conveying the feeling of the Russian Revolution for those that were there. The author's politics are seriously misguided and he was blind to many of the realities of what was going on, but that is part of what makes the book important - it helps one to see how an otherwise intelligent and insightful person can get caught up in a movement such as this.Wonderful descriptions of the personalities and events, but if you don't already have a basic understanding of what took place, it can be a difficult read.
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Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed Books Reviews
This excellent eyewitness account of the first days of the Bolshevik Revolution refutes the professional anticommunists' assertion that Lenin intended to establish an oppressive authoritarian regime with a centralized economy. The exact opposite was in fact true. Political and economic power was to be disbursed among workers and peasants soviets or councils.
Difficult to read as the subject matter of the revolution was very complex. The reader is exposed to all of the complexities, confusion, chaos, propaganda as it happened. How a strong country emerged out of such enormous chaos and fighting between hundreds of groups, committees, unions, military units, commercial interests etc is difficult to comprehend.
It was an interesting read but it was redundant at the last third of the book which was tiring to read and rehash old thoughts
This book is by a committed Communist, John Reed. (Mr. Reed is the only American who is buried in the Kremlin. Definitely, a singular honor.) This book is a good walk through the chaos of the takeover of the Duma by the Bolsheviks. It covers Mr. Reed's steps as he reports (& occasionally participates) in the Russian Revolution.
For further reading, I suggest "History of the Russian Revolution", by Leon Trotsky.
This is not the easiest book to read and desparately needed editing before being published. John Reed, being an American socialist journalist, was obviously biased although he occasionally tried to hide it. John Reed's account is also confusing in many places trying to distinguish the various factions in play during the Bolshevik Revolution. Under normal circumstances this could rate as maybe two or three stars.
So why am I being "generous" with five stars?
There were factors that contributed to the "sloppiness" of this book. The US Government confiscated Reed's notes when he returned to the US and he fought for seven months to get his notes back. Once he got the notes he went into seclusion. If the book reads like something that was slapped together in around ten days it is because the book was slapped together in around ten days. Given the circumstances the book was a good eye witness account of the turbulent days of the events in Petrograd, Moscow, and other parts of Russia in November 1917.
Regardless of what one may think of Lenin, Trotsky, Kerensky, Korilov, and other important players in the revolution these individuals and others played a critical role in a critical event that "shook the world". The book is especially interesting as it relays the hopes of the individuals in the early days of the revolution that was admittedly tense, confusing, and at times brutal. When the book was written Russia was in the second year of a civil war between Russian "Whites" and Russian "Reds". If the Whites had won then this book would have been just a footnote in the annals of political journalism. But the Reds won and what Reed witnessed turned out to be the start of something big that was to be a major impact on the world for decades to come.
The book was also written by an American socialist journalist whose opinion was framed in the hopes and dreams of the Russian proletariat. It is not tainted by the harsh and brutal reality that was to occur in the post-Lenin Russia as Reed -- who died in 1920 -- had no idea of what the future would be. He thought many wonderful things will happen as a result the revolution. Instead, a power struggle ensued after Lenin's demise and the Soviet Union was plunged into a dark hole from which many of the key characters of this book did not emerge.
It is also interesting that one of the book's harshest critics was Josef Stalin. Stalin was treated as a peripheral character who is mention maybe twice in the entire book. To make matters worse one of Stalin's bitterest rival, Leon Trotsky, emerges as one of the stars of the revolution without whom it probably would have failed. Stalin was to ensured Soviet historical accounts did not repeat that transgression.
Regardless of what one may think of Communism and Socialism this is a critical book that accounts for the very earliest days of the Soviet Union. It is not the easiest book to read but it is worth the effort.
Frankly, I don't know quite what I expected from this book beyond a better understanding of Russia's tumultuous history. The book reads as a novel-esque documentary and (for me) 'fell between two stools', failing as a novel and boring as a documentary. Great if you want every nuance of this reporter's experience, but don't go there if you're looking for a gripping storyline or a clear, bullet-point record covering this chain of events.
I would imagine most readers approach this book with some prior knowledge of John Reed, his political leanings, and the stature he was later accorded by Soviet authorities---that is, that he was a left-wing American journalist who traveled to Saint Petersburg to chronicle the Russian Revolution, that the Bolsheviks welcomed him into their ranks and gave him privileged access to their councils and machinations because of his sympathies with them, and that after his death he was canonized as a hero and buried along the Kremlin wall.
But I would suggest, for all Reed's partisanship, that "Ten Days that Shook the World" is nonetheless a work of first-class journalism vivid, compelling and revelatory, in part because it issues from a Western observer with a keen eye for facts and a deft command of the English language. Of all the histories I've read of the Bolshevik Revolution none bring these world-shaping events alive quite like this one.
There are countless reviews of this book out there. In short, it does an excellent job of conveying the feeling of the Russian Revolution for those that were there. The author's politics are seriously misguided and he was blind to many of the realities of what was going on, but that is part of what makes the book important - it helps one to see how an otherwise intelligent and insightful person can get caught up in a movement such as this.
Wonderful descriptions of the personalities and events, but if you don't already have a basic understanding of what took place, it can be a difficult read.
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