In your browser JavaScript is disabled!
From the battlefields of Europe he returned to the United States not with fine words about the cruelty at the front, but exposing the war as a whole, a war unleashed by the imperialists to increase their profits at the expense of the people. For the anti-war information that he spread he was brought before a New York court.
In court he said openly that it was his duty to fight for the revolution.
His speech exposing the war impressed everybody. John Reed was found not guilty.
In the summer of 1917, John Reed went to Russia, and during his stay there he realized that the victory of the Russian working class was approaching. When the fight began, John Reed was there with the revolutionary workers of Petrograd [´petrqgreId] in the Smolny, attending meetings at which Lenin spoke.
Having returned to the United States in 1918, he organized the Communist Workers' Party, which later became the Communist Party of the USA. He was arrested many times for his revolutionary work.
John Reed was a revolutionary long before he saw the events in the Palace Square in Petrograd, but his experiences there made him a scientific [saIqn´tIfIk] revolutionary. He studied the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin, which gave him an understanding of historical [hIs´tPrIkql] events leading to revolution. The Russian Revolution showed him the way forward, to the organization of the Communist Party in the United States, and to his work in the Communist International.
In 1920 he travelled to the Caucasus, where he took part in the Congress of the Workers of the East. There he caught typhus and died on October 17, 1920. He was buried near the Kremlin Wall with other fighters for the revolution.
