Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed

by Robert A. Rosenstone

Examines the brief life of the American journalist, political activist, and Communist and his struggle for social reform.

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir

443 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1975

About the author

Robert A. Rosenstone, who was born in Montreal, Canada, but has lived most of his life in Los Angeles, is the author of a dozen books in various genres, including history, biography, criticism, and fiction. The latter has been his major focus in recent years. Among his fictional works are the novel, King of Odessa (2003), a book of stories, The Man Who Swam into History : The (Mostly) True Story of My Jewish Family ( 2005), and the recent novel Red Star, Crescent Moon: A Muslim Jewish Love Story (2010).

Rosenstone’s scholarly works include Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed (1975), one of the sources for the Academy Award winning film, Reds, on which he served as historical consultant; Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters in Meiji Japan (1988), an experimental, multi-voiced biography of three American sojourners in nineteenth century Japan; Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil war (1969, reprinted 2009), and two works about historical film: Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (1995), and History on Film / Film on History (2006).

He has also been active in visual media projects, including time spent as consultant or writer for the following dramatic features and documentaries: Reds (1982), The Good Fight (1983), Darrow (1991), and Tango of Slaves (1999), and he has appeared on screen in several documentaries, including Screening Histories: The Filmmaker Strikes Back. (BBC, 1998), Rebels. (CBC, 1999), and Emma Goldman: A Troublesome Presence (PBS, 2004)

He is married to Nahid Massoud, a photographer, who is at once his best friend and his muse.

Reviews

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember reading a review of this in what I still consider my newspaper, The Militant. It was a poor review, but at the time I didn't take it too seriously. At that time, The Militant had a weekly In Review section, which was usually the worst part of the paper. We had a few staff writers, Socialist Workers Party leaders, and some others who could really write serious reviews, but the In Review section tended to be people with little political understanding or writing skills, some of them just sympathizers of the movement, who tended to present thing in a very one-sided, or sectarian way. Some people think that's what Marxism is, but they're usually people who have never read Marx. Some of them may have read some Stalinist group pretending to be Marxist.

The review's author was particularly disturbed by the title. I think it's an accurate way to look at the young John Reed, but he was becoming much more than that. Unfortunately, he died of spotted typhus in 1920 in the young Soviet Union.

For years there was a cottage industry of people who had known John Reed at some point in their lives who earned a living writing claims that before his death he had given up, or was starting to give up, his communist views. This had more to do with the political evolution of these folks than it did with John Reed. Such behavior was common during the McCarthyite witch hunt. Reed had probably gotten the disease at the First Congress of Peoples of the East (see To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920—First Congress of the Peoples of the East) where Reed gave greeting, and would have given another speech if there had been time--it's still part of the official record. It was almost impossible to get in or out of the USSR at the time--Reed had tried and been captured by the government of Finland. Soviet authorities were happy to trade him for a whole number of professors who supported the counterrevolutionary White Army. So, none of these people actually visited him on his deathbed. Reed's greatest book was Ten Days that Shook the World. Trotsky uses it as a source in his remarkable History of the Russian Revolution. Lenin wrote a short introduction to Ten Days.

Meanwhile, back to the review that I started talking about. Rosenstone rejects the claims of the he anticommunists. He simply says that Reed had become less naive about what a revolution entailed. I should hope so. And while the author of that stupid review views this as bending to the anticommunists, ironically, I think it's a sign of John Reed having less of a "romantic" view of revolution and a more mature Marxist view.

For more on the fiasco of "The Pageant of the Paterson Strike" in Madison Square Garden as a benefit for the strikers, see the definitive book on the IWW, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World. For the milieu of the socialist movement before World War I as well as the beginnings of the American Communist Party, see First Ten Years of American Communism: Report of a Participant by James P. Cannon, who was expelled from the Communist Party in 1928 for being a follower of Lenin, which was called "Trotskyism" at that time. And also read two books written by Cannon's comrade, Farrell Dobbs, Revolutionary Continuity Vol. 1: Marxist Leadership in the U. S., 1848-1917 and Revolutionary Continuity: Birth of the Communist Movement 1918-1922.

[Bahman Bahman · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Reed (October 22, 1887 – October 17, 1920) was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist. Reed first gained prominence as a war correspondent during the first World War, and later became best known for his coverage of the October Revolution in Petrograd, Russia, which he wrote about in his book Ten Days That Shook the World.

[Susan Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this biography. I learned about John Reed from the movie Reds with Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton. This biography is beautifully written and explains Reed’s search for a fairer system for working men and women. He believed that Russian socialism was the solution to inequality. He didn’t live long enough to see the folly of that belief.

[James Hadley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing biography, filled with primary sources and historical context. Highly recommend

[RYD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack Reed's short life was a full and fascinating one, and this book and its prose does a good job of capturing the energy in which he lived.

[Bob Peru · Rating 4 out of 5]

jack reed. hero.

[Chris Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great biography on one of the more interesting Americans of the early 20th century

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should read this again sometime. I read this when I was possibly too young, because it bored me to tears, although everyone else I know of who read it absolutely loved it.