An impassioned firsthand account of the Russian Revolution, which
celebrates its 100th anniversary in March 2017
An American journalist and revolutionary writer, John Reed became a
close friend of Lenin and was an eyewitness to the 1917 revolution in
Russia. Ten Days That Shook the World is Reed's extraordinary record
of that event. Writing in the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm,
he gives a gripping account of the events in Petrograd in November 1917,
when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized power. Containing verbatim
reports both of speeches by leaders and of the chance comments of
bystanders, and set against an idealized backdrop of soldiers, sailors,
peasants, and the proletariat uniting to throw off oppression, Reed's
account is the product of passionate involvement and remains an
unsurpassed classic of reporting.
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