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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 947.0841
EAN num: 9780140182934
ISBN number: 0140182934
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 368
Printing Date: February 07, 1990
Publishing house: Penguin Classics
Sale Popularity Level: 364514
Studio: Penguin Classics
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
John Reed conveys, with the immediacy of cinema, the impression of a whole nation in ferment and disintegration. A contemporary journalist writing in the very first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm, he gives us a record of the events in Petrograd in November 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally siezed power. Containing verbatim reports both of speeches by leaders and the chance comments of bystanders set against an idealized backcloth of the proletariat soldiers, sailors, and peasants uniting to throw off oppression, Reed's account is the product of passionate involvement.
Amazon.com Review:
The situation in St. Petersburg was growing more and more tense. The People's Revolution had begun by overthrowing the corrupt Tsarist regime in March 1917, but the workers and the peasants felt the revolution had much farther to go. Tired of fighting a war that meant little to them, the soldiers also grew restless: 'When the land belongs to the peasants, and the factories to the workers, and the power to the Soviets, then we'll know we have something to fight for, and we'll fight for it!'
Lenin pressed the Bolsheviks to seize power. On the night of October 24, an organized mass of workers, soldiers, peasants, and sailors stormed the Winter Palace. On the following day, at the opening of the second Congress of Soviets, Trotsky announced the overthrow of the provisional government. Counterrevolutionary forces marched on the capital, but the Revolutionary Army triumphed. After all, '[t]his was their battle, for their world; the officers in command were elected by them. For the moment that incoherent multiple will was one will.'
In Ten Days That Shook the World John Reed tells the story of Red October and the Russian revolution from a unique, firsthand perspective. Reed, an American journalist, was on assignment in Russia for The Masses--then the principal radical journal in the United States--and spent his days walking the streets, reading and collecting handbills, newspapers, and posters, and talking to people. As a result, Ten Days crackles with energetic immediacy. At its best moments it reads like a novel: Reed recounts conversations and arguments, details political machinations, and speculates on personal motives. Though this is no mere piece of propaganda, Reed's enthusiasm for the revolution infuses the text (some readers may be put off by Reed's florid prose), casting each counterrevolutionary act in a negative light. Helpful notes flesh out the background for those less familiar with the preceding events and render this a solid work of history. Ten Days That Shook the World is a stirring account of a stirring event. --Sunny Delaney
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Rated by buyers -
This is Jack Reed's well-written but highly partisan and pro-Bolshevik eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution. Reed's Soviet Socialist biases drip from every page like an oily coating, and this may irritate readers who are not quite so utopian as was Reed. TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD is all but useless as an objective history of the event, but it is extraordinarily useful as a subjective interpretation of the birth of the very first Communist state, and therefore, it is an interesting, fascinating, and valuable document well worth reading.
Rated by buyers 
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It should be pointed out that since the 1980s new information about Reed has come to light through acess to Soviet archives. These sources reveal that Reed was another in a long line of influential Americans who were paid agents of one of the deadliest totalitarian forces in human history. This doesn't tend to get mentioned when the NY Times and academic establishments praise this book's greatness.
Rated by buyers 
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This book is one of the most biased books ever written, but this shouldnt be taken as a criticism. This is one of the those history books that was written by someone that was actually there at the time things were happening, and the author made it clear that he was not trying to present "both sides" of the story. He was going to present the "people's side" (at least at that specific time). You dont have to be a communist to enjoy this book. In fact, you can compare the dream the people had at that time with what they actually got later. Beautifully written, this book makes you live the revolution. As you read it, you find yourself walking down the same street with the people at that time and listening to them talk and argue and even fight. Thanks to Reed's amazing style you can visualize the whole thing.
Rated by buyers -
John Reed, Harvard Class of 1910, epitomized the best of the pre-World War I bourgeois radicals. Unlike the vast majority of his Class and class he cast his fate with the working people and oppressed of America at a time when the dominant left bourgeois movement- the Progressive movement- was busy applying band aids to the increasingly inequitable capitalist system. The radical movement is always in need, sometimes desperately in need, of intellectuals to tell its side of the story. Despite some exceptions, like Reed, the intellectuals then, as now, either stand on the sidelines or at most acted as `fellow travelers' to the movement. Reed on the contrary put all his energies into the movement. As a journalist he sought out all the radical hotspots of his time starting with his coverage of the Mexican Revolution, through the various workers' strikes of the 1910's in America culminating in his coverage of the heroic period of the Russian Revolution. His journalistic account of the Bolshevik seizure of power, Ten Days That Shook the World, stands even yesterday as one of the best eyewitness accounts of that turbulent time in Russia. Reed had acess to many elements of Russian society, from the revolutionatry workers quarters in Vyborg and Kronstadt to high society in the shadow of the Winter Palace, and mined those sources for his material. He brings the passion of the partisan in the best sense to his work.
Revised and Updated Review- July 5, 2008
I, on more than one occasion, have mentioned that for a detailed history of the ebb and flow of the Russian Revolution of 1917 from February to October of that year your man is the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution is partisan history at its best. One does not and should not, at least in this day in age, ask historians to be `objective'. One simply asks that the historian present his or her narrative and analysis and get out of the way. Trotsky meets that criterion. I have also mentioned in that same context that there are other excellent sources on this subject, depending on your needs. If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its affect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr's History of the Russian Revolution offers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920's. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov's Notes on the Russian Revolution. If you need a more journalistic account for the period of the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks and the immediate aftermath, the book under review, John Reed's classic Ten Days That Shook the World is invaluable.
If we do not, as mentioned above, expect our historians to be `objective' then we have a lesser expectation of those journalists who write the `first draft of history'. Reed makes no bones that he is a partisan of the Bolshevik led social revolution that he was witnessing. He, nevertheless, tells his story reasonably well for those who are not partisans. Moreover, Reed seems to have been everywhere in Petersburg during those days. He is as likely to have been reporting from Petersburg's Winter Palace, the seat of the Kerensky's Provisional Government, as Smolny, the seat of the insurgent Soviets. We can find him among the bourgeois politicians of the City Duma or at the Russian Army General Staff headquarters. Hell, he was in Moscow when things were hot there as the Soviet forces tried to seize the Kremlin. He is at meetings large-Peasant Soviet size- or in some back room at Smolny with Trotsky's Military Revolutionary Committee that directed the uprising. To that extent, as a free lancer on the move, he covers physically during this period much more territory than Trotsky could as central director of the action and thus has more very first hand observations.
Reed's style tends toward straight forward reportage with little obvious sense of irony in the various situations that he is witnessing. Of course, against Trotsky's masterly ironic sense he is bound to suffer by comparison. Nevertheless Reed gets us into places like the City Duma and into the heads of various characters like the Mayor of Petersburg that Trotsky, frankly, displayed no interest in dealing with. Probably the greatest compliment that one could pay Reed is that he is widely quoted as a reliable source in many historical accounts from Trotsky on the winning side to someone like Kerensky on the losing side. For those who want a quick but serious overview of the dynamic of the October Revolution then here is your man. Add in his companion Louise Bryant's separate account, Six Month in Red Russia (if you can find it), and some very good primary source poster, pamphlet and newspaper material ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
To appreciate this book, you have to understand what it is and what it isn't.
This is top-notch journalism, by someone with a lot of insight into what he was seeing, and a knack for turning up in all the right places. It gives you a vivid, unparalleled *flavor* of the Russian revolution of 1917, the very first victorious working class revolution.
But it's still *journalism*. It's not an organized chronicle of what happened, beginning at the beginning and introducing events and ideas in a logical order. On top of that, Reed arrived in Russia at the climax of the revolution, after seven months of intense activity by an overwhelming cast of characters. If you read it too casually, it's like starting a textbook by reading the last chapter.
To get the most out of the book, I suggest reading Reed's introductory material carefully, probably returning to it more than once as you read the book. If you need more help, there's a good summary in the last two chapters of "Revolutionary Continuity: the Early Years" by Farrell Dobbs.
Your efforts will be well-rewarded. It really is great journalism.
For a definitive history, I highly recommend the widely acclaimed masterpiece, "History of the Russian Revolution" by Leon Trotsky. If you like one book, you'll like the other. I promise. Please read my review. (Click on "See all my reviews" above.)
Some reviewers complained that Reed doesn't explain the revolution's shortcomings -- the Russian revolution obviously turned out badly in the long run. But not everyone agrees that the revolution was fatally flawed from the very beginning. I don't. It's hard to read Reed's book and believe it was anything but an authentic popular revolution. For what went wrong, I recommend "The Revolution Betrayed" by Leon Trotsky and "Lenin's Final Fight", a collection of Lenin's last writings.
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