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"Ten Days That Shook the World (1919) is a book by the American journalist and socialist John Reed about the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, which Reed experienced firsthand. Reed followed many of the prominent Bolshevik leaders closely during his time in Russia. John Reed died in 1920, shortly after the book was finished, and he is one of the few Americans buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in Moscow, a site normally reserved only for the most prominent Soviet leaders. THIS book is a slice of intensified; history as I saw it. It does not pretend to be anything but a detailed account of the Russian Revolution, when the Bolsheviki, at the head of the workers and soldiers, seized the state power of Russia and placed it in the hands of the Soviets. John Reed John Reed was on an assignment for The Masses, a magazine of socialist politics, when he was reporting the Russian Revolution. Although Reed states that he had ""tried to see events with the eye of a conscientious reporter, interested in setting down the truth"" during the time of the event, he stated in the preface that ""in the struggle my sympathies were not neutral"" (since the book leans towards the Bolsheviks and their viewpoints) Before John Reed left for Russia, the Espionage Act was passed on June 15, 1917, which fined and imprisoned anyone who interfered with the recruiting of soldiers and prohibited the mailing of any newspaper or magazine that promoted such sentiments. The U. S. Post Office was also given leave to deny any mailing that fitted these standards from further postal delivery, and then to disqualify a magazine because it had missed a mailing (due to the ban) and hence was no longer considered a ""regular publication."" Because of this, The Masses was forced by the United States federal government to cease publication in the fall of 1917, after refusing to change the magazine's policy against the war. The Liberator, founded by Max Eastman under his and his sister's private control, published John Reed's articles concerning the Russian Revolution instead. In an effort to ensure the magazine's survival, Eastman compromised and tempered its views accordingly. Upon returning from Russia during April 1918 from Kristiania in Norway, after being barred from either traveling to the United States or returning to Russia since February 23 by the State Department, Reed's trunk of notes and materials on the revolution--which included Russian handbills, newspapers, and speeches--were seized by custom officials, who interrogated him for four hours over his activities in Russia during the previous eight months. Michael Gold, an eyewitness to Reed's arrival to Manhattan, recalls how ""a swarm of Department of Justice men stripped him, went over every inch of his clothes and baggage, and put him through the usual inquisition. Reed had been sick with ptomaine on the boat"

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John Silas Reed (October 22, 1887 - October 17, 1920) was an American journalist, poet, and communist activist, best remembered for Ten Days That Shook the World, his firsthand account of the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. He is one of three Americans honored by being buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis (the others are labor organizer Bill Haywood and Charles Ruthenburg, founder of the Communist Party USA). On August 17, 1917, Reed and Bryant set sail from New York to Europe, having first provided the State Department with legally sworn assurances that neither would represent the Socialist Party at a forthcoming conference in Stockholm.[35] The pair were going as working journalists to report on the sensational developments taking place in the fledgling republic of Russia. Traveling by way of Finland, the pair arrived in the capital city of Petrograd immediately after the failed military coup of monarchist General Lavr Kornilov. This was an attempt to topple the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky by force of arms. Reed and Bryant found the Russian economy in shambles. Several of the subject nations of the old empire, such as Finland and Ukraine, had gained autonomy and were seeking separate military accommodations with Germany. Reed and Bryant were in Petrograd for the October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks, headed by Vladimir Lenin, toppled the Kerensky government; the Bolsheviks believed this was the first blow of a worldwide socialist revolution. Food shortages made the situation dire in the capital, and social disorder reigned. Reed later recalled: The last month of the Kerensky regime was marked first by the falling off of the bread supply from 2 pounds a day to 1 pound, to half a pound, to a quarter of a pound, and, the final week, no bread at all. Holdups and crime increased to such an extent that you could hardly walk down the streets. The papers were full of it. Not only had the government broken down, but the municipal government had absolutely broken down. The city militia was quite disorganized and up in the air, and the street-cleaning apparatus and all that sort of thing had broken down-milk and everything of that sort

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