Educated at Williams College and Columbia University, Eastman moved to New York in 1907 where he began working as a journalist. Together with his sister Crystal, he founded the Men's League for Women's Suffrage in 1910. Eastman at this time was a confirmed socialist and took a job as editor with the radical left-wing magazine, The Masses, in 1912. The magazine had a prestigious group of writers which included Carl Sandburg, Upton Sinclair, Sherwood Anderson and Amy Lowell. Because of its anti-war stance and criticism of the government, the magazine was harassed by the government to the extent that it was finally forced to cease publication. Legal action was taken against Eastman under anti-sedition legislation, but resulted in a hung jury. In 1918, he helped to establish The Liberator, another radical journal that was eventually taken over by the Communist Party in 1922. Eastman visited the Soviet Union and became good friends with Trotsky and in 1925 published Leon Trotsky: Portrait of a Youth. Eastman recognized the dangers inherent in Stalin's power and his attitude towards Bolshevism and the Revolution altered significantly when Trotsky was exiled. Eastman then lived in France for a few years before returning to the U.S. in 1927. By the time of the Second World War, Eastman had virtually abandoned his socialist views and in 1941 he was appointed roving editor of Reader's Digest. Over the next few years he wrote many anti-communist articles and in the early 1950's became a supporter of Senator Joe McCarthy. He continued to work for Reader's Digest until shortly before his death. His other works include Enjoyment of Poetry (1913), Journalism Versus Art (1916), Color of Life (1918), Since Lenin Died (1925), Marx and Lenin: The Science of Revolution (1926), The Enjoyment of Laughter (1935), The End of Socialism in Russia (1937), Marxism, Is it Science? (1940), Heroes I Have Known (1942), Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (1955) and Love and Revolution (1965). |
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