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Hossam el-Hamalawy

Tag: john reed

Ten days that shook the world

Posted on 15/08/200831/01/2021 By 3arabawy

John Reed describing the transformation of Russian society with the outbreak of the 1917 revolution:

As in all such times, the petty conventional life of the city went on, ignoring the Revolution as much as possible. The poets made verses–but not about the Revolution. The realistic painters painted scenes from medieval Russian history–anything but the Revolution. Young ladies from the provinces came up to the capital to learn French and cultivate their voices, and the gay young beautiful officers wore their gold-trimmed crimson bashliki and their elaborate Caucasian swords around the hotel lobbies. The ladies of the minor bureaucratic set took tea with each other in the afternoon, carrying each her little gold or silver or jewelled sugar-box, and half a loaf of bread in her muff, and wished that the Tsar were back, or that the Germans would come, or anything that would solve the servant problem–. The daughter of a friend of mine came home one afternoon in hysterics because the woman street-car conductor had called her “Comrade!”
All around them great Russia was in travail, bearing a new world. The servants one used to treat like animals and pay next to nothing, were getting independent. A pair of shoes cost more than a hundred rubles, and as wages averaged about thirty-five rubles a month the servants refused to stand in queue and wear out their shoes. But more than that. In the new Russia every man and woman could vote; there were working-class newspapers, saying new and startling things; there were the Soviets; and there were the Unions. The izvoshtchiki (cab-drivers) had a Union; they were also represented in the Petrograd Soviet. The waiters and hotel servants were organized, and refused tips. On the walls of restaurants they put up signs which read, “No tips taken here–” or, “Just because a man has to make his living waiting on table is no reason to insult him by offering him a tip!”

‘If I had the job of popularizing this war, I would begin by sending three or four thousand American soldiers to certain death’

Posted on 31/07/200831/01/2021 By 3arabawy

John Reed, “The Unpopular War,” Seven Arts, August 1917, interviewing a group of Council of National Defense officials about the US involvement in an ensuing unpopular World War:

The aviation enthusiast spoke up, lying on his back and blowing expensive cigar smoke at the ceiling.
“Do you know what is needed? Only one thing–the same that did the trick for England. Casualties. At first it was impossible to interest the English masses in the war; they could not be made to see that it was their affair. But when the lists of the dead, wounded, mutilated, began to come back–and, by the way, England ought to be grateful for the German atrocities–then hatred of the Germans began to soak into the whole people from the families of the wounded and the dead. This social anger is patriotism–for war purposes.
‘If I had the job of popularizing this war, I would begin by sending three or four thousand American soldiers to certain death. That would wake the country up.’

It is safe to say that this is the same caliber of people as those who running America’s govt a century later.

The origins of workers’ control of industry in Russia

Posted on 26/07/200827/03/2015 By 3arabawy

A fascinating account by John Reed, written on November 23, 1918 in The Revolutionary Age.

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