Talk:John Reed (journalist)

message: According to a book on George Bellows I'm reading by M. Haverstock Reed and Bellows travelled from NYC to Philly in 1915 to cover one of Billy Sunday's revivals. That date doesn't exactly jive with him being listed in Europe from 1914 on. If anyone can get the dates correct this is one really interesting hapinstances of history that a famous (or infamous) evangelist, journalist, and painter were all togather at one event. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.116.157.176 (talk) 03:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Billy Sunday and George Bellows 

message: I'm pretty sure that almost the entire article was a copyright violation.  It didn't read like an encyclopedia article, and when I googled a phrase, this came out.  It's an extract from the book Howard Zinn on History (2000), and I'm pretty sure it's copyrighted.  It also turns out that the editor who added this information has also added other articles with dubious copyright violations, see The Masses and New Masses. - Hahnchen 18:56, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur, this seems like plagerism, all sources are from the same book.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.174.176.4 (talk) 17:21, 30 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyvio reversion 

message: The article claims that reed was the "only American buried in the Kremlin Wall in Red Square"; I was under the impression Bill Haywood's ashes (in part) were also burried there.
-Deus Homoni 09:37, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think C.E. Ruthenberg's ashes are also there and there may be one other American. BTW: properly speaking, Reed was buried AT the Kremlin wall, not IN it... Carrite (talk) 03:37, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  "only American buried in the Kremlin Wall in Red Square" 

message: I don't think the party itself was illegal. The Espionage Act of 1917 and Sedition Act of 1918 probably made some of their activities illegal (membership in an international party, basically), aside from their actual criminal acts. The Palmer Raids exclusively attacked members of leftist groups, but none of the groups, per se, were made illegal. The article for Workers Party of America says it was "underground", but never illegal. Is this nit-picking?
192.132.210.30 19:00, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: german wiki says reed have had a Criminal procedure by the Supreme Court of the United States for High treason and so he fleed from the USA, emigrating in the soviet union --Tets1 13:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I hope the grossly erroneous German wiki has been fixed! Carrite (talk) 03:20, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

text:  With regard to "illegality"... There was a campaign in 1918-1919 for the various states to implement their own "anti-Syndicalism" laws, which made advocacy of revolution a criminal offense. Therefore, the Communist Party was technically illegal one place but not another — their 1922 convention in Bridgman, Michigan was raided by STATE authorities charging violation of STATE laws, even though the Bureau of Investigation provided them the intelligence and helped out with the manpower. The other thing that proved troublesome for the early Reds was the fact that membership in the CPA was interpreted as illegal per se with respect to immigration laws, which were written so as to bar those professing "anarchist" beliefs. As an overwhelming percentage of the early Communist movement were immigrants (approaching 90% of the total in the first years), this made membership "illegal" for most whether the activity of the party was technically banned by state law or not... Interestingly, the courts ruled that membership in the Union of Russian Workers (Anarchist group targeted in Nov. 1919) and the Communist Party of America (hit in December 1919) were illegal per se, but membership in the Communist Labor Party (also hit in December and January 1920 with the CPA) was not. But I digress... Carrite (talk) 03:55, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Communist Party USA illegal?

message: He is in the Left Communist Category, but no source or citation for that is given. Mdotley 22:54, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Again, we must be VERY careful about those who purport a deathbed conversion of John Reed to The Glorious Cause of Anti-Communism. Ben Gitlow was himself a committed anti-communist when he made this assertion (and was trying to sell books to boot!). He was in no position to know about the matter in any event, as Reed was in Moscow and Gitlow was in New York, arrested in December and in prison not too long after. Louise Bryant, who was herself in Soviet Russia, claimed there was no such deathbed conversion — statement made in some magazine article or other that I typed up for my site, from The Liberator, I believe... Ted Draper, a great historian, similarly had his own axes to grind, true fact. The facts are: (1) Reed was sent to the USA by Lenin (who wrote the introduction for his book!) as the "consul" of Soviet Russia; (2) Reed was subsequently an activist in the Left Wing movement of 1919 before the Communist Parties were even formed; (3) Reed was a founding member of the Communist Labor Party; (4) Reed was sent to Soviet Russia by the CLP as its representative to the CI; (5) Reed went to work for the Comintern. This doesn't sound like the activity of someone disillusioned by the Revolution by his experiences in 1917-18, eh? Years after his death was a great deal of propaganda made by those claiming to know the innermost thoughts of the Comintern man in Soviet Russia in 1920 — by those who simply were in no position to know these things. And the woman who was in a position to know says that no such "conversion" happened... Propaganda. Carrite (talk) 03:34, 24 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Left Communist? 

message: ‘His feelings about the revolution were now ambiguous: on the one hand, he told Emma Goldman, who had recently arrived aboard The Buford and especially complained about the Cheka, that the enemies of the revolution deserved their fate. However, he suggested that she see Angelica Balabanoff, a critic of the current situation, indicating he wanted Goldman to hear the other side’
I don't think this suggests ambiguity in his feelings so much as a lack of dogmatism and willingness to hear all sides of the debate.  And if it *does* suggest ambiguity, then the ambiguity it suggests is in his feelings about the Cheka, not about the revolution itself.82.23.135.169 (talk) 22:42, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Ambiguity" 

message: Any relation to the powerful, but low-key, Reed family in Las Vegas, NV? Just wondering. Apple8800 (talk) 20:17, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Decendsants? 

message: John Reed's position in the Hasty Pudding group is written in Greek or Cyrillic.
There is no explanation of the meaning of the word, nor any link
to a source which might provide an explanation.
Somebody please add one or both.
99.157.72.34 (talk) 04:52, 24 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hasty Pudding