Regrouping: The Liberator Years
On Lincoln’s Birthday, 1918, Crystal and Max Eastman launched the Liberator: The Journal of Revolutionary Progress. The magazine plainly supported Bolshevism, and also served as watchdog for propaganda and misinformation concerning revolutionary revolts. Eastman’s most important writing was her reporting from inside Communist Hungary in August 1919. However, the lived human experiences of revolution she witnessed put her at odds with the Liberator’s star radical, John Reed, and her brother Max. A pacifist and feminist, as well as a radical, she praised the abolition of private property but deplored the bloodshed and repression under the revolutionary government. The experience brought her to a political impasse. Two elemental goals, once aligned, now appeared to be competing claims: justice or peace? In an era of revolutionary victory, how could she make sense of violence perpetrated to achieve the equality and justice she had long believed was the only recipe for world peace?