—A. BALABANOFF.  

Note (Aug 08). Jack (or John) Reed may be not among the ones to be blamed, after all. He was from all appearances a somewhat misguided idealist ; many of those early revolutionists were. By some reports I have seen (e.g. by Boris Souvarine), even that Grand Master of destruction, Lenin himself, had at some point been compelled to admit some errors in his program (a something about which his chief successor, Stalin, cared not a whit about) — which suggests he (Lenin) had to some extent actually believed in his original purposes.

May any persons to whom this might apply quit deluding themselves (and others) with a "system which had already begun to devour its own children" circa 1920 : and had never done any other, whatever patch-ups might have been attempted.

It seems that anything that had ever actually worked under any official (state) 'socialism' could not be found in the texts its reputed founder, one Karl Marx ; and anything that could had never actually worked. A fine distinction, but please do not overlook this, the honest believer, of whom some remnants can be seen here and there (itself a sure sign of there having been some unresolved problems).

How serious may be the problem of some crooks trying to use your 'socialism' solely to some unrelated ends (advantages) I would not try to gauge at this point. I am afraid that this may be far more serious than is generally realized. Err on the side of caution on this area, anybody ; the 20th century record looks gruesome.

WPT., Aug 08.

From Clare Sheridan�s Diary , 24 October 1920, Sunday. Moscow.

We have all been very much saddened by the death from typhus of John Reed, the American Communist. Everyone liked him and his wife, Louise Bryant, the War Correspondent. She is quite young and had only recently joined him. He had been here two years, and Mrs. Reed, unable to obtain a passport, finally came in through Murmansk. Everything possible was done for him, but of course there are no medicaments here : the hospitals are cruelly short of necessities.* He should not have died, but he was one of those young, strong men, impatient of illness, and in the early stages he would not take care of himself.

* Were there no medicaments available for a Radek or a Zinoviev ? I for one am most heavily skeptical on such a count. — (WPT).

I attended his funeral. It is the first funeral without a religious service that I have ever seen. It did not seem to strike anyone else as peculiar, but it was to me. His coffin stood for some days in the Trades� Union Hall, the walls of which are covered with huge revolutionary cartoons in marvelously bright decorative colouring. We all assembled in that hall. The coffin stood on a dais and was covered with flowers. As a bit of staging it was very effective, but I saw, when they were being carried out, that most of the wreaths were made of tin flowers painted. I suppose they do service for each Revolutionary burial.

There was a great crowd, but people talked very low. I noticed a Christ-like man with long, fair curly hair, and a fair beard and clear blue eyes ; he was quite young. I asked who he was. No one seemed to know. �An artist of sorts,� someone suggested. Not all the people with wonderful heads are wonderful people. Mr. Rothstein and I followed the procession to the grave, accompanied by a band playing a Funeral March that I had never heard before. Whenever that Funeral March struck up (and it had a tedious refrain), everyone uncovered ; it seemed to be the only thing they uncovered for. We passed across the Place de la Révolution, and through the sacred gate to the Red Square. He was buried under the Kremlin wall next to all the Revolutionaries his Comrades. As a background to his grave was a large Red banner nailed upon the wall with the letters in gold : �The leaders die, but the cause lives on.�

When I was first told that this was the burying ground of the Revolutionaries I looked in vain for graves, and I saw only a quarter of a mile or so of green grassy bank. There was not a memorial, a headstone or a sign, not even an individual mound. The Communist ideal seemed to have been realized at last : the Equality, unattainable in life, the Equality for which Christ died, had been realizable only in death.

A large crowd assembled for John Reed�s burial and the occasion was one for speeches. Bucharin and Madame Kolontai both spoke. There were speeches in English, French, German and Russian. It took a very long time, and a mixture of rain and snow was falling. Although the poor widow fainted, her friends did not take her away. It was extremely painful to see this white-faced, unconscious woman lying back on the supporting arm of a Foreign Office official, more interested in the speeches than in the human agony.

The faces of the crowd around betrayed neither sympathy nor interest, they looked on unmoved. I could not get to her, as I was outside the ring of soldiers who stood guard nearly shoulder to shoulder. I marvel continuously at the blank faces of the Russian people. In France or Italy one knows that in moments of sorrow the people are deeply moved, their arms go round one, and their sympathy is overwhelming. They cry with our sorrows, they laugh with our joys. But Russia seems numb.* I wonder if it has always been so or whether the people have lived through years of such horror that they have become insensible to pain.

* The crowd had probably been herded cattle-like to attend the funeral, in keeping with the general idea of the Bolshevik leaders about �the masses�. (But I do not know.) — (WPT).

Happily no salute was fired. The last time the machine guns rattled at a burial I heard them in my studio, which is just the other side of the wall. . . .

When I got back I found Maxim Litvinoff, who also had been at the funeral and had looked for me in the crowd in vain. He says that he has arranged with Tchicherin that I am to begin him to-morrow. . . .

Russian Portraits by Clare Sheridan
London : Jonathan Cape, 1921, pages 151 - 154.
Or : Mayfair to Moscow — Clare Sheridan�s Diary.
New York : Boni and Liveright, 1921, pages 160 - 164.

From The World at the Cross Roads by Boris L. Brasol, 1921

As far as American labor is concerned, Lenin and Trotzky knew enough to realize that neither Rheinstein nor John Reed nor a few other �comrades� who crossed the ocean to participate in the adoration of Moscow communist idols, were in any way representative of the real spirit of the American working masses. The Soviet leaders are also well aware that American labor stands almost united in its opposition to Lenin�s scheme for world dictatorship. With all that, the Bolsheviki know that their only hope lies in world revolution, without which their rule is doomed.

Boston : Small, Maynard & Co., 1921, page 311.

From My Life as a Rebel, Angelica Balabanoff, 1938

. . . I first met John Reed . . . while he was on his way back to the United States from Russia. In Russia, immediately after the Revolution, he had been put in charge of the English-speaking section of Karl Radek�s Press Bureau and I understood that he was now returning to America to work for the Bolshevik movement there. (The year that followed he was to play a leading rôle in the splitting of American Socialism and the formation of the Communist Party.) His visit had been preceded by a letter from Chicherin or Lenin, and having heard that his nomination for consul in the United States had been revoked by the Bolsheviks, his proposal for the establishment of a neutral newspaper disapproved, I expected to find some trace of personal resentment in his disappointment. There was none whatever, and I had only to talk with him a few minutes to understand that here was one of the most devoted and genuine revolutionists I had ever met. Very often, Russian radicals or �friends of Soviet Russia,� or �na�ve� individuals whom Chicherin wanted to get rid of, were sent to me in Stockholm. Reed was none of these. I was amazed to find in an American such a profound understanding of the Russian Revolution and such love for the Russian masses. As a journalist and a poet, as well as a revolutionist, it was probably natural that he should have been stirred by the dramatic boldness of the Revolution itself. But there was something more than an appreciation of the colour and drama of the Revolution, hero-worship of its leaders and sympathy with its aims in Reed�s enthusiasm for Russia. He loved the country itself and the great anonymous mass that had made the Revolution possible by its suffering and endurance.

I was surprised and somewhat skeptical when he told me that he had written a book about the Revolution—completed within a few weeks. How, I thought, could a foreigner, with only a rudimentary knowledge of Russia, write an adequate account of such a momentous event? After I had read a few chapters of Ten Days That Shook the World I understood to what extent Reed�s intuition and creative art, his passionate love for the masses, had contributed to his understanding of the significance of the Russian events. This book was published with a preface by Lenin and for a while became a text-book in Russia.

Jack and his wife, Louise Bryant, and I became close friends during the weeks they spent in Scandinavia. . . .

( pages 177-8 ).

 

After my return to Moscow from Petrograd, it was John Reed who put into words that which I had already begun to suspect. We had been meeting frequently since his return to Russia from the United States, drawn together by our common, though as yet unacknowledged, disillusionment and growing despair. Reed had been traveling about the country with Party credentials under the most dangerous and difficult conditions, getting in touch with the peasants and the miners, sharing the cold, hunger, and filth of the average Russian life. Clothed in a long for coat and a fur shapka, he looked like a typical Russian from the Caucasus. I do not think that any foreigner who came to Russia in those early years ever saw or came to know as much about the conditions of the people as did Reed in the spring and summer of 1920. He was becoming more and more depressed by the suffering, disorganization, and inefficiency to be found everywhere, but like the rest of us who saw these things, he understood the difficulties of the situation—enhanced by the blockade, sabotage, the shortage of materials—and his irritation and discouragement were directed not at the government itself, but at the growing indifference and cynicism of the bureaucracy of all gradations. He was particularly discouraged when he saw his own efforts and those of the other friends of the Revolution defeated by indifference and inefficiency. Sensitive to any kind of inequality and injustice, he would return from each of his trips with stories that were heartbreaking to both of us. The fact that he talked only with me of such matters was not due to caution or diplomacy, but to the fact that he knew that I, too, was in the same mood. He was merely thinking out loud.

I remember meeting Reed at one of the huge entertainments which the trade unions arranged in the sumptuous building they had inherited from the former aristocracy. It was during a period of the greatest scarcity of food and fuel, and the government leaders were trying to take the workers� minds off the material situation with musical and dramatic performances. Though some of the artists who performed on this occasion were among the best in Russia, there was something bout the quality and manner of their performance that irritated me. They were obviously giving inferior performances, playing down to a working-class audience which was not supposed to know any better. I was all the more irritated when I saw that the officials who organized the affair were so radiant and proud of their accomplishment.

�Parvenus, petit-bourgeois,� I thought to myself. �They don�t see how the artists are insulting these workers.�

I rose and started to leave the hall, and as I did so, Jack Reed came over and joined me. �Let�s go,� he said. I have never heard a voice so full of humiliation and sadness.

It was strange that Jack, a foreigner, should have understood both my own and the general situation before a Russian like myself.

�They want to get rid of you,� he told me after my return from Petrograd, �before the foreign delegations arrive. You know too much.�

�But surely,� I replied, �they don�t doubt my loyalty.� �Of course not, but neither do they doubt your honesty. It is that they are afraid of.�

I knew that my refusal to go to Turkestan, under orders from the Comintern Executive, would probably result in my removal, but I had already indicated that I was willing to pay this price. (In the 1930�s, a similar breach of discipline would probably have resulted in my imprisonment or worse. In 1920, the Soviet leaders were still responsive to working-class opinion abroad.)

About a fortnight after the Petrograd meeting of the Executive, Reed ran into my room.

�Tell me, Angelica, are you still the secretary of the International or not?�

�Of course I am, at least nominally,� I replied.

�If that is so, why aren�t you attending the Executive meeting?�

�I knew nothing about it. Where is it held?�

�Well, I know,� he answered. �Those cowards are meeting in Litvinov�s commissariat, so that you won�t know where they are.�

Though I was feeling ill, I dressed and went to the meeting. As I entered the Room, Zinoviev grew quite pale and the other members were extremely embarrassed. I waited for the meeting to close without saying a word. Then I asked Zinoviev to explain why I had not been notified and what had taken place.

�Oh,� he replied, without looking up, �we thought that Trotsky had told you. The Executive Committee has already decided to remove you—because of your refusal to go to Turkestan.�

The news of my removal, the realization that I was no longer even nominally responsible for methods and activities I despised, gave me a sense of liberation I had not felt for years. But what impressed me most at this moment was the cowardice of this man who, pretending to be a revolutionary leader, had not even the courage to face an individual or to assume responsibility in an unpleasant situation.

In spite of the sense of liberation following my removal from office, my realization of the means by which this had been accomplished, the motives behind it, and the suspicion of how widespread and pervasive these methods had become—together with my weakened physical condition—resulted in a sort of physical and nervous breakdown in which my whole organism was shaken. I was touched at this time to receive from John Reed a picture of himself. In the corner of it he had written; �To the best revolutionist I have known in Russia.� I knew when I read these words what John Reed must have suffered—he who had known and worshipped the leaders of the Revolution.

( pages 243 � 246 ).

 

The mandate round which most of the conflict in the Congress centred, was embodied in the famous �Twenty-One Points.� Zinoviev could scarcely conceal his satisfaction and malice when he flung these �Conditions of Affiliation with the Third International� into the faces of the assembled delegates and at the revolutionary movement throughout the world. These Conditions were based upon the �thesis� that the class struggle was �now passing into civil war.�

As I was the only translator available for the Congress, I was able to judge more clearly than most of the delegates the character and trend of that event. Through the interminable discussion (the Congress lasted for three weeks) I was forced to repeat lengthy polemics in Russian, German, French, Italian, to translate hundreds of questions and answers. I had a feeling that I was participating not merely in a political, but also in a personal, tragedy, involving some of my dearest friends. It was obvious that John Reed, as he watched the proceedings, shared my feeling. For Reed, waging his own particular battle with Radek and Zinoviev, that tragedy lay not so much in his inability to defend himself effectively against these men, as in the realization that he was struggling against a system which had already begun to devour its own children. His resignation from the Comintern was a symbol of his despair.

( pages 274-5 ).

New York and London : Harper & Brothers, 1938.

From The Harvard Man in the Kremlin Wall, Bertram Wolfe, 1965

. . .   How much the virus, how much the ravaged body, how much the broken spirit prevailed, we can only guess. To Angelica Balabanoff, and to Louise Bryant, who had just managed to come to Moscow from America, it seemed, as Angelica was to write, that "the moral and nervous shock had deprived him of the wish to live, of that love of life that was so prominent in his character."

When Kobetsky, technical secretary of the International, wrote to Lenin that Reed was dead, Lenin answered:

Comrade Kobetsky!'
1. Your report (that is the report of the physician you sent me) and the note, should be sent abroad.
2. Who is in charge of the Hotel Lux? Its remodelling for the Comintern? The management part?

Lenin 18/X      

With Reed's death, rebellion ended. As the author of what Lenin rightly esteemed to be the best book on his seizure of power, Reed was given a state funeral. Feeling that she could not speak of him without speaking of his last days, Angelica Balabanoff refused to deliver an address of even attend his funeral. "I knew Reed would have understood . . . Most of the people who commemorated him were not entitled to do so. their speeches had to be cold, official, conventional."

 

A decade passed, and the ashes lay forgotten, along with the sturdy example of independence. Then Stalin began to utilize the names of the safely dead, and to purge the living, including most of the men who figured so prominently in Reed's book : Trotsky, Antonov-Ovseenko, Bukharin, Radek, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and so many more. Ten Days That Shook the World was alive with their names and deeds, so it too was suppressed, first in Russia and then wherever the Comintern owned the copyright through a manipulated publisher, as in England.

But in America, John Reed's name was exploited through the John Reed Clubs. A biography was invented for him in which his rebelliousness and manly opposition to dictatorial authority found no place.

Then suddenly, the "line" changed. In the new "Popular Front" period of the nineteen-thirties, revolution had to be played down. Jack's name was too inseparable from the idea of the October Revolution. It was dropped as remorselessly as it had been previously used; overnight, the John Reed Club became the League of American Writers.

With Stalin's death, the wheel of fortune took another turn. Reed's book reappeared in Russia; Lenin's cold letter to Kobetsky was published as evidence of Lenin's Concern for American writers."

Still John Reed's spirit evades official control . . . .

Strange Communists I Have Known, Bertram Wolfe
New York : Stein and Day, 1965, pages 50 - 51.