Ten Days That Shook the World by John Silas Reed

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The description above says the author provided a dispassionate observation of the Bolshevik revolution. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Author Reed was the most famous American socialist of his time and he very lovingly describes the actions of the Bolsheviks and their leaders. Lenin and Trotsky are regularly praised and positioned as messianic figures for the working class.

Those facts notwithstanding the book is a good historical account of what happened during that fateful time that would eventually culminate in a battle for the world's dominant political ideology. From the very beginning the Bolsheviks denied individual rights and cherished freedoms thinking this sort of revolution was inevitable and would eventually happen around the world as Marx said.

I wonder what the USSR would have ended up like had Lenin lived longer without Stalin ruling with an iron fist. I'm sure the end result would still have been a huge nation of oppressed people but would the nuclear standoff with America have come about?



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