A01=William Whisenhunt
ackerman
american journalists
american labor movement
anarchists
author
Author_William Whisenhunt
Bolshevik Revolution
bolsheviks
capitalism
Category=DNB
Category=JPFC
Category=JPFF
Category=KNTP
Category=NHK
cheka
chicago
civil war russia
cold war
collectivization
communism
constituent assembly
cossacks
discourse ideology
emma goldman
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_business-finance-law
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
february revolution
first world war
forthcoming
hunger famine
intelligentsia
international socialism
John Reed
journalism history
july days
kerensky
Lenin
lumberyard worker
marxism
mensheviks
moscow
new economic policy
new york
october revolution
political repression
preacher
proletariat
propaganda
provisional government
radical writer
red army
red guards
russian civil war
russian empire
russian intelligentsia
russian orthodox church
russian revolution
russian socialism
russian soviets
russian writers
saint petersburg
secret police
social democracy
social revolution
socialism
socialist journalism
soviet government
soviet propaganda
soviet russia
Soviet Union
soviets
stalin
state planning
strikes labor
terror repression
third international
trotsky
tsarist regime
united states diplomacy
USSR
war correspondence
women revolutionaries
workers movements
world war impact
yale university press
Product details
- ISBN 9780252049811
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 29 Sep 2026
- Publisher: University of Illinois Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Albert Rhys Williams used his cover as a journalist to, as one observer put it, go "through the Bolshevik Revolution in a dress suit." Inspired by brief friendships with Lenin and John Reed, Williams spent the next forty-five years defending socialism and the Soviet Union.
William Benton Whisenhunt draws on the largely untapped archive of Williams's papers to provide a first-ever biography of the dedicated radical writer. Williams spent nearly ten years living and traveling in the USSR, where he observed the Soviet system and reported on it with unusual nuance in numerous books, articles, and speeches. Whisenhunt follows Williams from his early life as a lumberyard worker and preacher through his participation in the Revolution and his long career as a radical writer. Able to see socialism as flawed, Williams's nonetheless defended it as an alternative to capitalism with such vigor that correspondents often addressed him as Comrade Rhys.
Astute and richly detailed, Comrade Rhys reveals the life and work of an overlooked radical thinker.
William Benton Whisenhunt draws on the largely untapped archive of Williams's papers to provide a first-ever biography of the dedicated radical writer. Williams spent nearly ten years living and traveling in the USSR, where he observed the Soviet system and reported on it with unusual nuance in numerous books, articles, and speeches. Whisenhunt follows Williams from his early life as a lumberyard worker and preacher through his participation in the Revolution and his long career as a radical writer. Able to see socialism as flawed, Williams's nonetheless defended it as an alternative to capitalism with such vigor that correspondents often addressed him as Comrade Rhys.
Astute and richly detailed, Comrade Rhys reveals the life and work of an overlooked radical thinker.
William Benton Whisenhunt is a professor emeritus of history at the College of DuPage. He was a J. William Fulbright Senior Scholar in Russia in 2006. He is also the author or editor of several works on Russian history and Russian-American relations. He is co-managing editor of the Journal of Russian American Studies.
