Max Forrester Eastman

Max Forrester Eastman (1883-1969), American writer and editor, whose work focused on radical politics. He was born in Canandaigua, New York, and educated at Williams College and Columbia University. In 1912 he became editor of the revolutionary periodical The Masses, which he ran until 1917, when it was suppressed by the government for opposing the entry of the United States into World War I (1914-1918). Eastman later founded and edited a similar publication, The Liberator (1918-1922). On a visit to the USSR (1922-1924), he came to know many of the Soviet leaders, but he also became an opponent of the oppressive Soviet regime. His critical works include Enjoyment of Poetry (1913), The Literary Mind (1932), and Enjoyment of Laughter (1936). Among his books on political science is Since Lenin Died (1925), which made public the previously suppressed testament of V. I. Lenin urging that Joseph Stalin, then general secretary of the Communist Party, not be permitted to succeed Lenin as chairman of the party. Other works by Eastman include Stalin's Russia and the Crisis in Socialism (1939), Marxism: Is It Science? (1940), and Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955). He was the translator of History of the Russian Revolution (3 volumes, 1932) and The Revolution Betrayed (1937), written by Leon Trotsky. Eastman wrote two autobiographical works, Enjoyment of Living (1948) and Love and Revolution: My Journey Through an Epoch (1965).