The true story of John Reed, a radical American journalist around the time of World War I. He soon meets Louise Bryant, a respectable married woman, who dumps her husband for Reed and becomes an important feminist and radical in her own right. After involvement with labour and political disputes in the USA, they go to Russia in time for the October Revolution in 1917, when the Communists seized power. Inspired, they return to the USA, hoping to lead a similar revolution.