From the Archives: Bessie Beatty and the Red Heart of Russia
A post form 2022 for your amusement while I catch up on the things that piled up during Women’s History Month. New posts soon, I promise!
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I was recently digging about in the history of women’s magazines in the early twentieth century when I came across a familiar name: Bessie Beatty. I knew Beatty’s work from her reporting on Russia’s Women’s Battalion of Death, which I wrote about in Women Warriors. At the time, I was totally engrossed in the women Beatty wrote about and gave no thought to the reporter herself. Funny how things change.
Beatty got her start in journalism at the age of eighteen, working for the Los Angeles Herald while she was still in college. Partway through her senior year, she left college to report on a miner’s strike for the Herald.
Her work in Nevada caught the attention of Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco Bulletin.* At the Bulletin, Beatty ran a feature page, titled “On the Margin” [!!!], in which she covered women’s issues and social work, broadly defined. (Among other things, she ran a campaign on behalf of prostitutes who were put out of work when the red light district was closed. Not your typical social justice campaign even today, let alone in the first years of the twentieth century. )
In 1917, as the Great War raged on, Older sent Beatty on a large-scale reporting assignment: a series of articles called “Around the World in War.” Four days after she sailed, the United States declared war on Germany.
American correspondents, officially accredited and otherwise, headed toward Europe. Beatty and a few others headed east. She reported on social and cultural traditions in Hawaii,** Japan, and China, but her real destination was the revolution in Russia. Like other reporters who built their careers reporting on social justice issues and exposing corruption in government, she had a romantic vision of the new socialist government and wanted to see it first hand.
She traveled traveled from the Pacific port of Vladivostok to Petrograd (formerly, and once again, St. Petersburg) aboard the TranSiberian Railway, a twelve-day trip through Russia to the heart of the revolution. Once in Petrograd, she managed to get a room in the War Hotel, where Russian officers lived with their wives. With the hotel as her base, she followed Russia’s involvement in the war and the course of the revolution. She traveled to the front, getting within 160 feet of the German trenches, and sat in a concrete observation station from which she could see barbed wire of no-man’s land through a narrow peephole. She and another reporter, Rheta Childe Dorr, spent a week with the Women’s Battalion of Death, traveling with them to the front and sleeping with them in their barracks. She interviewed sailors, soldiers, peasants and the woman in the street.
When the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government in November, Beatty witnessed every stage of the new revolution, aided by a pass from the Military Revolutionary Committee that gave her access everywhere in the city. She spent hours in the Soviet, listening as revolutionary leaders argued about the shape of the new state. She interviewed political prisoners, including ministers of the deposed Provisional Government
Like other American journalists drawn to report on the revolution, she believed in the experiment she was watching unfold. (In fact, she would later testify in favor of the Bolshevik Revolution before Senator Overman’s sub-committee on the influence of Bolshevism in America.)***
In February 1919, Beatty and two other journalists, Madeline Doty andLouise Bryant, decided it was time to leave Russia. They caught the last train to leave Petrograd for Finland, which was fighting to free itself from Russian rule, and then traveled by sleigh from the northernmost corner of Finland into Sweden. (*Brrr*)
Like many of her fellow journalists, Beatty wrote a book about her experience of the revolution, The Red Heart of Russia (1918). Her sentiments about the revolution, as she expressed them at the end of the book, were complicated: “Mingled with my sorrow, the morning I left Petrograd, was a certain exultant, tragic joy. I had been alive at a great moment and knew that it was great.”
Back in the United States, Beatty chose not to return to San Francisco. Instead she stayed in New York, where she finished her book and worked as the editor of McCall’s from 1918 to 1921.
She soon grew eager to travel as a journalist again. Her articles on politics, women’s rights, and even tourist destinations, appeared in popular magazines such as Good Housekeeping, The New Republic, Women’s Home Journal, and Century.
Beatty returned to Russia in 1921. It took her weeks to get into the country, but once there she stayed for nine months, writing a series of interviews with Bolshevik leaders, including Lenin and Trotsky, for the San Francisco Bulletin.
She spent some time as a screenwriter for MGM. She remained a dedicated activist. And in 1940, she entered a new career as the host of a popular radio show on WOR in New York. During World War II, she used her show to sell more than $300,000 in war bonds.**** She continued to broadcast until her death in 1947 at the age of 61.
Describing her on-air personality, Time magazine described her as “a short, voluble bit of human voltage.” Not bad.
*Older was unusually supportive of women reporters and gave a number of talented women, including Rose Wilder Lane, their start in a field that was not always welcoming to women.
**Which was annexed by the United States in 1898 and became a US territory in 1900. Just to give you a piece of chronology to hang your hats on.
***An early version of the Red Scare.
****$5,270,000 in today’s dollars.
Women’s History Month comes to an end, again
As always, I have mixed feeling about the end of Women’s History Month.
As always, I’ve loved running this series of mini-interviews with people doing interesting work in the field of women’s history. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, too.
Over the last few months[1] I’ve had a chance to interact with some of my history-writing heroes, and find some new ones. I’ve added books to my TBR list. I’ve promoted people who are doing wonderful work in our shared project of putting women back into history. And I’ve tried to answer some really hard questions—as always, people posed some doozies!
But I have to admit, this year Women’s History Month has been a little harder. In previous years there has been a sense of celebration in all the places I hang out online. This year organizations still hosted women’s history programs, and I deeply enjoyed the chances I had to speak. People still posted stories about women doing amazing things. But it’s all been less exuberant. Instead of joy, there has been a sense of doggedness. An insistence that women’s history will not be erased. Or maybe that’s just me—I’m pretty dang tired.
In the past one of the questions I asked the people I interviewed was “Do you think Women’s History Month is important and why?” Every year, someone asked me the same question in return. This year I didn’t ask, because the answer is clear. Most of us who are involved in this work wish we didn’t need Women’s History Month, or Black History Month, or any of the other history months and heritage months that now mark our calendars . That we didn’t have to put up big flashing signs that say “WE WERE THERE, DAMN IT!” once a year to remind people that history should tell everyone’s stories. That we have already integrated those stories into history as we teach and read about it.
Today it seems like we are further away from that goal than we were even a year ago.
As far as I’m concerned, that means I’m going to keep telling you stories you may not know, and that I didn’t know either–year in and year out. I’m going to be a little louder than I have been in the past. I hope you’ll come along for the ride. We’re all in this together.
[1] This is always a five-month project. I start sending out invitations to possible guests in November. And I always scramble to get the last few posts up at the end of March.
Talking About Women’s History: Three Questions with Della Leavitt
I am delighted to wrap up this year’s Women’s History Month Q & A series with Della Leavitt. She and I have been following each other around the writing world, on-line and in real life, for a long time.
After careers in tech and math education, Della began an intensive DIY study of writing fiction within the vibrant Midwestern writing community including coursework and a fellowship at the Newberry Library. She continues to study within editors’ private workshops. Della served on the Board of Directors of the long-running Off Campus Writers’ Workshop for four years. She lives in Chicago with her spouse of several decades and their fearless feline Vic (Victoria). Their son and his wife live nearby along with daughter, Nora Shirley.
Her debut novel, Vivian’s Decision (She Writes Press) is evocative work of historical fiction set in 1956 in Chicago. It is the story of Vivian Jacobson, an overwhelmed mother grappling with whether to have an illegal abortion, who discovers her Jewish immigrant mother faced a similar crisis when pregnant with Vivian. Vivian’s Decision is an all too relevant story of repeated history, female friendship, and the strength that it takes to make choices of one’s own. It will be released on April 14, 2026 and is available for pre-order now.
Take it away, Della!
What inspired you to write Vivian’s Decision?
Not exactly “what”, but “who.” My foray into creative writing came later in life than most after my lengthy careers in the tech field and mathematics education. I had an idea to write the serendipitous story as a gift for my (now, late) mother’s 90th birthday about how my parents met after my father returned to Chicago after fighting in Europe during World War II followed by several months of German occupation. I had long been a discerning reader of fiction and participated in a women’s book group that ran for 30 years, but I never imagined I could become a writer. I soon realized how much I needed to learn if I were to write artful fiction and signed up for many workshops, including Chicago’s StoryStudio and the Off Campus Writers’ Workshop.
I became curious about mother’s mother, a Russian Jewish immigrant who died before I was born. I’m named for her. Her Hebrew name was Dena Rivka, but when she arrived at Ellis Island in 1906, the officials named her Della, a popular female “D” name during that time. She died around age 60 (although we never knew her exact age) in Los Angeles where my mother’s six siblings and their families had moved during the 1940s when they left Chicago. Each of my Grandmother Della’s seven children revered their mother and often spoke of her hard life. Each one named a child for her, often with the initials “D.R.” I’m Della Ruth. There are also Delle, Dan, Debi, Dennis, Denise, and Donna. I wondered whether having seven children–five born at home in a flat on Chicago’s West side and two at Mt. Sinai Hospital—had shortened my grandmother’s life.
Vivian’s Decision began as the story of Vivian’s immigrant mother, Hannah Kolson, as I began imagine how powerless women must have felt, particularly poor and immigrant women, with almost no control over childbearing. I recalled one of my aunts relating a story when she acted as her mother’s English language go-between. The local druggist admonished my grandmother: “if you don’t want this baby, I’ll take him!” That scene grew in my imagination. It appears in an early chapter of Vivian’s Decision.
As I wrote, I felt strongly that I wanted to portray the lives of Jewish immigrants who came to Chicago in the early 20th Century to escape violent Tsarist pogroms and also, the next generations of their Chicago-born children and their families. How they strived to assimilate during the post-WWII Cold War era. This is a world that no longer exists yet resonates with many issues in today’s United States including antisemitism and the backlash against immigrants or perceived immigrants.
Vivian’s Decision deals with questions of reproductive rights in a time before Roe v. Wade made abortion legal. Are there special challenges in writing about a historical event with echoes in current politics?
The women I wrote about in Vivian’s Decision who lived in the first half of the 20th century all knew that abortion was against the law, despite it being an act many would seek out for various reasons. During my 2021 research fellowship at the Newberry Library, I found statistical references often broken down by religion and the number of a mother’s previous births. In Chapter 11 of Birth Control: Its Use and Misuse (1934, Harper and Sons), titled “Abortion,” Dorothy Dunbar Bromley cites and summarizes several prominent studies:
- “The great majority of abortions occur today among married women.” (p. 138)
- “Out of 5010 patients of the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau in New York who admitted to having abortions 28 per cent were Protestant, 26 percent were Catholic, and 43 per cent were Jewish, representing the same ratio of religious belief as obtains among all of the Clinic’s patients. After the fifth pregnancy, the Catholic ration led all others.” (p. 142)
- “There are all kinds and varieties of abortionists, ranging from extremely skillful surgeons to one-horse practitioners and bungling midwives. …Abortionists of any class, as a rule, avoid trouble by refusing to abort a patient who is more than two and a half months along…” (p. 143)
As with quantification of any illegal activity, it is unlikely these counts are accurate, but the large numbers imply that the practice of abortion was not uncommon, although each woman would have made her decision specific to her situation. This would always be an individual act.
There is a tendency, as with all historical fiction, to write about an action like abortion through the lens of today’s mores. I tried to keep in mind the perspectives of women and men of Vivian’s Decision who lived in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s who never dreamed abortion could become the law. My own view was different. As a young woman, I was a member of the Chicago Women’s Liberation Union who celebrated on the night of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Roe v. Wade ruling. By that time, abortion was legal in New York, New Jersey, and Puerto Rico. It was clear that nationwide legalization was imminent.
Before the Dobbs decision in June 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade, I had already written a number of drafts of Vivian’s Decision with several different endings. Given the dramatic increase of draconian restrictions including banning all elective abortions and termination of unviable pregnancies that threaten a mother’s life, I began to feel the urgency to portray a 1950s middle class mother with a supportive husband, who had options. Vivian Jacobson had a referral from a reputable obstetrician to an (albeit, illegal) abortion provider. When at last, I turned to Pulitizer Prize-winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks’ 1947 poem “The Mother” to explore the feelings and universality of this truly individual decision, I found the emotional heft I needed to write an ending attuned to the times.
Who are some of your favorite writers of historical fiction?
Like many historical fiction readers, author Kate Quinn stands out for me. Her novels weave twisting plots, and often unlikely, heroic female characters that recreate eras replete with vivid period details. Among my favorites of Quinn’s novels are The Briar Club (2024), taking place in a 1950s McCarthy-era rooming house in Washington, DC; The Huntress (2019), in which a Russian female bomber pilot a British male journalist, and linguist, team up on a worldwide hunt for Nazis after World War II has ended; and The Rose Code (2021) that follows three women from divergent backgrounds who are recruited to serve as codebreakers in England’s Bletchley Park.
Along my writer’s journey over these last twelve years, I’ve been extremely fortunate to have met, befriended, and learned from several generous and talented authors, either in-person or remotely, over Zoom. All have enriched my life. In the last year, two of my contemporaries published well-researched, debut historical novels. Both also drew upon family history for their initial inspirations. Janis Falk grew up in Detroit’s Polish community. She now lives in Wisconsin’s Door County. Janis looked to her Depression-era forebears for Not Yet Lost (She Writes Press, September 2025). At the core of this novel are the hardships and triumphs that female cigar factory workers endured leading to their courageous strike in 1937. Leslie Schover grew up in the Chicago area. She’s a retired research psychologist living in Houston. Her debut novel Fission: A Story of Atomic Heartbreak (She Writes Press, January 2026) springs from when Leslie’s parents and older sister lived in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Leslie’s father was a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project. Her father was one of the scientists who signed the petition urging President Truman not to drop the atomic bomb before demonstrating the extent of the weapon’s potential devastation.
One of my favorite novelists, Elizabeth Berg, doesn’t always write historical fiction. While writing the first draft of Vivian’s Decision, I found inspiration in Berg’s historical novel, Dream While You’re Feeling Blue (2008) about a loving Chicago Irish family with
Want to know more about Della and her work? Check out her website: https://www.dellaleavitt.com/