Ten Days That Shook the World

An eyewitness record of the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power, written by the American radical journalist John Reed, who was in Petrograd as the Provisional Government fell. Reed moves through crowded meeting halls, street barricades, and the corridors of the Smolny Institute, quoting speeches, decrees, and rumors as they happened, and offering close portraits of Lenin, Trotsky, and the workers and soldiers who filled the capital. He never hid his sympathy for the revolution, yet his reporting captures the confusion, argument, and raw energy of those weeks with rare immediacy. First published in 1919, it remains one of the most vivid accounts of the events that reshaped the twentieth century. This free PDF and EPUB edition includes the complete text.