give the new regime its politically expedient behavior: the repudiation of $87 million in Czarist-floated loans, taking over private property, nationalization of the banks, peace with the Germans (the Brest-Litovsk treaty). The allies were furious! At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Wilson obligingly sought Soviet representation. Winston Churchill spoke of “the foul baboonery of Bolshevikism.” France argued to crush them. Despite his heart going out to the long-suffering Russian people, the American President went along with the Allied boycott until 1920. More than that, American troops joined the Allies in fighting and occupying Russian territory during the Red- White civil war. At Murmansk and Archangel, in Siberia. Reed’s reply to Western fears and criticism was this: “It is difficult for the foreign bourgeoisie to understand the ideas that move the Russian masses. It’s easy to say that they aren’t patriotic, honorable, and duty-bound. Incapable of self government. A new ideology has replaced the attributes of the bourgeois democratic state! “There is patriotism—it is allegiance to the international brotherhood of the working class; there is duty—to the revolutionary cause; there is honor—based on the dignity of human life and happiness rather than on what a fantastic aristocracy of blood or wealth has decreed is fitting for ‘gentlemen’ . . . ” John Reed saw the Russians “inventing a whole new form of civilization.” He raved on: “The Russian people, they have the art instinct.. .. They have made what the French call the grande geste.... It is all I care for in life. The ballet, the opera, the grand extravagances of the rich—what are they beside this epic?” He was enthusiastic as the dickens, but the newspapers in New York weren’t. They shelved his articles. Also he learned that he was under indictment, along with other editors of the Masses. His crime: Putting a 7-word title across a verbatim doctor’s report about mental breakdowns in the military. KNIT A STRAIT-JACKET FOR YOUR SOLDIER BOY. Louise returned home first and, because she was not known as a subversive, published Six Red Months in Russia. When she met Jack at the dock, on April 28, 1918, he was arrested. He posted bail, but all of his papers—the raw notes he needed to complete Ten Days— were confiscated! It would take six months, and Steffens petitioning Colonel House, Wilson’s closest advisor, to get them back. 1919 America was at the height of an unprecedented political hysteria. Far worse than the McCarthy era! There were skyrocketing prices, labor unrest—outbursts in Boston and Seattle. Bombs were mailed through the Post Office. Attorney General Palmer’s house was blown up. Known as “the Fighting Quaker,” Palmer began “a witch hunt.” His most conspicuous and popular act was the round-up of hundreds of “Reds.” A total of 249 undesirables—among them anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman—were put on an American transport and shipped to Russia. It was dubbed “the Soviet Ark.” One overwrought columnist burbled: “My motto for the Reds is S.O.S.—ship or shoot. I believe we should place them all on a ship of stone, with sails of lead, and that their first stopping place should be hell.” Released on bail in 1918, Reed faced a trial and was acquitted. He went on a national speaking tour and was greeted by enthusiastic crowds. Reed truly was a fearless, almost reckless man. He made bold decisions, wearing his political integrity as if it was a bullet-proof vest. Sharing his sense of dramatics, Louise showed up in Portland. At critical moAs the crowd surged through the aisles,Jack and two comrades hoisted a kicking and spluttering Lenin up on their shoulders. No fan o f American football, Lenin didn't understand. ment, she brandished the satiny red lining of her cape before the hometown crowd. After his papers were returned in November, he secretly rented the top floor of the Greenwich Village Inn. He holed up for 2 months—writing furiously. What emerged was one of the great books of the 20th century. Boni and Liveright published Ten Days That Shook the World in March of 1919. It was a critical and popular success. Even his detractors had to give him credit; they’d been calling him “a playboy revolutionary.” No more could Lippmann say of him, as he had in the New Republic: “By temperament he is not a professional writer or reporter. Heis a person who enjoys himself. Revolution, literature, poetry, they are only. . .i- ncidents merely of his living.” Reed had gotten the job done. And not by sitting in an ivory-tower editorial office. Discontent with more journalism, he immediately got involved in politicking, helping to found the U.S. Communist party. It would factionalize and split in two. The last several years of Reed’s life were spent in incredibly internecine, convoluted and Byzantine movements—ferrying back and forth between the U.S. and Moscow. It became Reed’s mission, after a party meeting in Chicago, to take the credentials of the mainly foreign-born members of the Communist Labor Party to Moscow. To get it certified as the one and only CP. When he got to Moscow, as an official delegate to the Communist International Congress, in June of 1920— he got chopped up in a dog-fight with Soviet party heads Radek and Zinoviev. He lost in heated debate arguing to make it official policy to organize a brand-new labor party in the U.S. No, work with the American Federation of Labor and Samuel Gompers, came down the decree. Probably from Lenin himself. On his return to America, Reed planned to start writing poetry again and a novel, the sequel to Ten Days. From Kornilov to Brest-Litovsk. Could a person of his temperament and wild-card personality comfortably wear 2 hats at one time? Creative, independent writer and professional politico? Having called the anarcho-syndicalists “absurdo-stu- pidists,” he himself bristled at rules and regulations. Questions Jn September of 1919, Reed—cracking jokes about life’s ironies, carrying forged seaman’s papers; he was “Jim Gormley”—boarded a Scandinavian freighter. He would work as a stoker. Hard work for a man now older, with but one kidney. This was his eleventh crossing! At dock-side, he promised a worried Louise that he’d be back in three months. To reach Russia through Scandinavia was extremely difficult. The civil war was raging, and the Whites were winning. During the next year famine would erupt in the U.S.S.R. Lenin had been nearly assassinated. The Bolsheviks were beseiged on every side. And Jack cheerfully walked into this mess! Was he suicidal? From Bergen he traveled to Christiana, then to Stockholm, crossing the Baltic sea to Abo, Finland. Writing to reassure Louise, he boasted: “ I am the big cheese in these parts! The Voice of Labor is greatly admired. . . . I was never in better health.... Inform Mother I am well.... Back before Christmas, I hope.” He added, “From now on it seems that we must never be parted.” In Moscow, the executive committee decided that the two Communist parties ought to be merged. They gave him $15,000 in diamonds and currency to foster Communism in America. The winter of 1919-1920 was horrible in the U.S.S.R. Nine million would die in two years from disease, famine, and war. He was still optimistic about the revolution. He chatted intimately with Lenin in his Kremlin apartment. The leader asked Reed questions about America, praised Ten Days—writing a laudatory preface for future editions. “Unreservedly do I recommend it to the workers of the world.” The theorist and bureaucrat never promised that the aftermath would be easy. First there would be economic democracy, only then political democracy- control was necessary. The Cheka, or secret police, were active for real reasons. Jack believed in the practice. “This is war,” he wrote. This “vast network of half-detective, half-revolutionary vengeance organizations all over Russia” were needed to eliminate proven traitors. In February of 1919, Reed started homeward. America. He knew that he might have to go to jail! His own CLP was indicted in Illinois; his name was on the list. In Petrograd at the Astoria Hotel he warmly greeted Emma Goldman, just off the Soviet Ark, and then argued with her: “You are a little confused by the Revolution in action because you have dealt with it only in theory.” Sneaking aboard a freighter in Abo—hiding in the engine room—the Finns caught him. Under intense questioning Reed admitted his identity. He was put on trial, but U.S. officials refused to attend. Charged with smuggling, the Finnish police grilled Reed about participation “in Communist undertakings in our country, being in secret contact with the enemy of our state- Soviet Russia.” Left in prison limbo, he secreted out a letter to friends in New York stating he’d been executed! This forced the State Department to admit he was alive. Louise and others badgered the American government to force his release. He waited and waited. For three months he had no exercise, no writing paper, subsisting on dry bread and raw fish. In June, the emaciated and weakened American revolutionary was freed. He looked “like death warmed over.” Reed still wanted to go home. The Charge d’Affairs Alexander Magruder denied him a passport. The U.S. State Department, in effect, killed Reed by not allowing him to return to the U.S.—to good food, rest and recuperation. JOHN REED WAS THE FIRST AMERICAN VICTIM OF THE COLD WAR—THE ONE THAT’S BEEN GOING ON EVER SINCE 1917. He returned to wartime Moscow, to engage in serious politicking at the Comintern. His impulsive, exuberant personality maintained itself right up to the end. After the serious political squabbles, when Reed lost to Zinoviev at the Third Comintern, there was still a celebration at the closing session. Big shot speeches at the Moscow Opera House. Impromptu singing. As the crowd surged through the aisles, Jack and two comrades hoisted a kicking and spluttering Lenin up on their shoulders. No fan of American football, Lenin didn’t understand. One of them got a lump on the head, and Jack laughed about it. Caught in a Trap T ) eed was then sent to Baku on the K distant Caspian Sea, as a test of his party discipline. Before leaving Moscow he wrote Louise: “I am so disappointed not to be able to meet you. . .telegraph me the minute you are in Russia, so that I may hurry back.... I am longing to see my honey more than I can tell.” It was a difficult journey and the congress went on for 10 days. Zinoviev preached to the Eastern masses as sabers flashed—a “real holy war”—and he worked them into a flurry to recreate the Mongol invasions against Europe. Jack had real doubts about this demagoguery masquerading in the name of Marxism. On September 15, he embraced Louise in reunion. She was shocked at his appearance. He was “older and sadder and grown strangely gentle and aesthetic (sic).” His clothes hung on his body HUMAN RELATIONS INSTITUTE MA DEGREE PROGRAM IN COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY Degree Specialization in DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY INCORPORATING DEPTH TRADITIONS WITH THE PRACTICE OF COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY The Human Relations institute's program in counseling psychology strives to reaffiliate psychology with the humanities. in a unique approach to the study of psychotherapy, the program is designed around an interdisciplinary curriculum that includes, in addition to training in individual and family psychotherapy, the study of depth psychologicdl traditions, art and mythology MONTHLY WEEKEND COURSES In addition to core and adjunct faculty, distinguished lecturers and therapists from the field of Depth Psychology contribute to the program. These have incluaed James Hillman, Charles Ponce' Linda Leonard. Marion Woodman and Robert Stein NOW ENROLLING FOR 1987-1988 PROGRAM For a catalog: HUMAN RELATIONS INSTITUTE. 5200 Hollister Avenue. Santa Barbara, CA 93111 (805)967-4557 Clinton St. Quarterly— Fall, 1987 29
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