The New Fellow-Travelers

Ann Applebaum:

Ninety years ago this week, a Bolshevik mob stormed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, arrested the provisional government, and installed a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in its place. Though the Russian revolution is no longer widely celebrated (not even by the Russians, who instead commemorate the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow in 1612), I felt it important to mark the occasion. In honor of the anniversary, I reread Ten Days That Shook the World, the famed account of the revolution written by John Reed, the American journalist and fellow-traveler. Then I reread last week's press reports of the recent encounter between Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, and Naomi Campbell, the famed British supermodel.

Just as I'd remembered, Reed's book superbly transmits the breathless energy of the autumn of 1917—"Adventure it was, and one of the most marvelous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history at the head of the toiling masses"—as well as his own fascination with, and approval of, the violence he sees around him. After attending a mass funeral, he understands, he writes, why the Russians no longer need religion: "On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory to die."

continued