Ten Days That Shook the World

Published to coincide with its 100th anniversary, this dazzling eyewitness account of the Russian revolution takes its readers into the heart of the extraordinary events that occurred in St. Petersburg towards the end of 1917. It is accompanied by a new Foreword by the distinguished economist David Laibman.

An American journalist on assignment for the New York based communist newspaper, The Masses, John Reed provides a riveting description of the events that led Lenin and the Bolsheviks seizing power. Crackling with energetic immediacy, Reed’s chronicle is based on his days and nights walking the streets and visiting the meeting halls in a city ablaze with revolutionary fervor. His reports are crammed with urgent information gleaned from handbills, newspapers and posters and from talking with soldiers, peasants and industrial workers who have flooded into the city to join the ranks of an insurgency that would storm the Czar’s Winter Palace and declare a revolutionary government.