Petrograd

Petrograd matters as both a place where revolutionary change is witnessed and a name whose news travels across the Atlantic. In October 1917, Jack Reed is placed among the soldiers and peasants there, in the orbit of Smolny and Ten Days That Shook the World. Later, word that the government has been taken over reaches a small circle of workers in New York, where its promise inspires political action even as surveillance and arrest bear down on those who respond.

Petrograd in Reed’s wartime trajectory

The narrative sets Reed’s presence in Petrograd against his earlier, more picturesque associations with Mexico and the social world of the Harvard Club. By October 1917, he is with soldiers and peasants in Petrograd; the compressed sequence of place, institution, and book title—Petrograd, Smolny, Ten Days That Shook the World—marks a decisive reorientation toward the revolution. The text does not elaborate on his day-to-day activity in the city, but it identifies him with the people and political upheaval there rather than with the playboy interests and old-time war-correspondent stories it leaves behind.

That change is framed by the broader violence of the war. Reed is described as being with people being blown apart across national lines: Germans, French, Russians, Bulgarians, and the seven little tailors in the Ghetto in Salonique. Petrograd enters this sequence not as an isolated destination but as the place where the war’s suffering and the revolutionary response meet. The contrast between the earlier appeal of picturesque scenes and the soldiers and peasants in Petrograd makes the city a marker of a more consequential political commitment.

The takeover reaches New York

Petrograd reappears in the account through news received far from the city. After Ben Compton refuses to support a Liberty Bond drive and is fired without explanation, he panics that his antiwar remarks could expose him to prosecution under the Espionage Act. He tells Helen Mauer that he intends to go to Mexico; rather than remain in their room, they pack their bags and travel to New York, with about a hundred dollars between them. They rent a room on East 8th Street under the name Mr. and Mrs. Gold.

The next morning, while they are having coffee at a small pastry shop on 2nd Avenue, Ben returns from a newsstand with the report that the Maximalists have taken over the government in Petrograd, under the slogan All Power to the Soviets. Helen sees the news as evidence that workers will recognize the war’s aims and that soldiers in other armies may mutiny. Ben takes her hand and changes his plan: instead of fleeing to Mexico, he says he will face jail in the United States. The news from Petrograd thus becomes a personal turning point, strengthening his resolve to act where he is.

Organizing in the revolution’s name

The report prompts Ben and Helen to seek out Al Ferber, a doctor who offers money for a meeting to send greetings to the soldiers’ and peasants’ government, provided his name is kept out of it lest he lose his practice. Molly Ferber offers to sell something and contribute as well. The group spends the day finding comrades in person because they fear the telephone wires may be tapped. Petrograd is distant, but the effort to respond to its revolution is organized through cautious, local relationships and material support.

A week later, the meeting takes place at the Empire Casino in the Bronx. Its purpose is to send greetings from American workers to the workers in Russia. Federal agents sit in the front row with a stenographer, the police close the doors after the first couple of hundred people arrive, and uniformed soldiers and sailors enter the gallery. The chairman’s greeting to the oppressed workers of America and the triumphant workers of Russia draws cheers inside and outside; people sing The Internationale amid police whistles and the sound of a patrol wagon.

Revolutionary signal and political repression

Ben speaks at the meeting, arguing that capitalist governments are driving workers into a war that benefits bankers and munitions makers, and that workers will eventually use the weapons they are being taught to handle. His remarks connect Petrograd’s upheaval to a hoped-for international class movement, but the meeting’s immediate outcome is repression rather than an unimpeded exchange of solidarity. Soldiers and sailors push people from their seats, police converge on the speakers, and Ben is arrested with others. Men of conscription age must show their registration cards before they can leave; Ben is taken away in a closed limousine before he can speak to Helen.

The novel therefore gives Petrograd two linked functions. It is the setting of Reed’s encounter with revolutionary soldiers and peasants in October 1917, and it is the source of news that animates American workers’ hopes and organizing. Yet the New York response also shows the limits imposed on that solidarity: a gathering called in the revolution’s name is watched, dispersed, and followed by arrests. The city’s significance lies not in a detailed account of its streets or buildings, which the evidence does not provide, but in the political force its revolution exerts across distance.