Μνήμη Τζον Ριντ ("Ten days that shook the world")

"With the greatest interest and with never slackening attention I read John Reed's book, Ten Days that Shook the World.

Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world.

Here is a book which I should like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages.

It gives a truthful and most vivid exposition of the events so significant to the comprehension of what really is the Proletarian Revolution and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

These problems are widely discussed, but before one can accept or reject these ideas, he must understand the full significance of his decision.

John Reed's book will undoubtedly help to clear this question, which is the fundamental problem of the international labor movement."

V. LENIN.
End of 1919.

John (Silas) Reed (1887-1920)

Γεννήθηκε σαν σήμερα στο Πόρτλαντ των ΗΠΑ.

Προλετάριος-δημοσιογράφος και ποιητής, στενός φίλος

του Λένιν, που κάλυψε με τις ανταποκρίσεις του

την Οκτωβριανή Επανάσταση και έγραψε το

συγκλονιστικό βιβλίο

" Δέκα μέρες που συγκλόνισαν τον κόσμο" (1920).

Πέθανε από τύφο στα 37 του χρόνια

και τάφηκε στον τοίχο του Κρεμλίνου

δίπλα σε άλλους ήρωες των Μπολσεβίκων

"It was just 8.40 when a thundering wave of cheers announced the entrance of the presidium, with Lenin-great Lenin-among them. A short, stocky figure, with a big head set down in his shoulders, bald and bulging. Little eyes, a snubbish nose, wide, generous mouth, and heavy chin; clean-shaven now, but already beginning to bristle with the well-known beard of his past and future. Dressed in shabby clothes, his trousers much too long for him. Unimpressive, to be the idol of a mob, loved and revered as perhaps few leaders in history have been. A strange popular leader-a leader purely by virtue of intellect; colourless, humourless, uncompromising and detached, without picturesque idiosyncrasies-but with the power of explaining profound ideas in simple terms, of analysing a concrete situation. And combined with shrewdness, the greatest intellectual audacity."

( extract from Ten Days That Shook the World)