Ten Days that Shook the World
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the book. For the film, see October: Ten Days That Shook The World.
 |
|
| Author | John Reed |
|---|---|
| Country | US |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Boni & Liveright, New York |
| Released | 1919 |
Ten Days that Shook the World (1919) is a book by American journalist and socialist John Reed, about the October Revolution in Russia 1917 which Reed experienced first-hand. Reed followed many of the prominent Bolshevik leaders, especially Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek, closely during his time in Russia, and the book sides with the Communists and their viewpoints.
John Reed died in 1920 shortly after the book was finished, and he is the only American buried by the Kremlin Wall in Moscow, a site normally reserved only for the most prominent Soviet leaders.
After the rise of Stalinism in Russia, Joseph Stalin argued that John Reed was wrong on many things in Ten Days that Shook the World, particularly the parts about Leon Trotsky, Stalin’s archenemy. The book portrays Trotsky as the hero of the Revolution and mentions Stalin only once, and then only in the recitation of a list of names. Consequently Stalin banned Reed's book and similarly Trotsky's works.
[edit] Preface by Lenin
Ten Days that Shook the World has a short preface written by Vladimir Lenin himself:
- With the greatest interest and with never slackening attention I read John Reed's book, Ten Days that Shook the World. Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world. Here is a book which I should like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages. It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. These problems are widely discussed, but before one can accept or reject these ideas, he must understand the full significance of his decision. John Reed's book will undoubtedly help to clear this question, which is the fundamental problem of the international labor movement.
- V. LENIN.
- End of 1919.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
