John Scott, journalist and Soviet authority, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Scott Nearing. He attended the University of Wisconsin, 1929-1931, and after leaving school dropped his last name (Nearing). Armed with a welder's certificate and a determination to see the world and write, he sailed for Russia in 1932 where he spent five years working in the Magnitogorsk steel complex. The 1937 purge forced him from Soviet industry, but Scott remained in the country for several more years, working as a correspondent for Havas, the French news agency, and the London News Chronicle.
Scott spent portions of 1940 and 1941 traveling through the Balkans, the Middle East, Asiatic Russia, and Japan, and his resulting news reports attracted considerable attention. In 1941 he returned to the United States, and the following year he became a contributing editor for Time magazine. As such, his assignments included the State Department, London, and Stockholm, where he headed the Time-Life bureau until 1945. After the war, Scott reopened Time's Central European bureau in Berlin. In 1948 Time reassigned him to the New York office, promoting him to special correspondent and then to assistant to the publisher in 1952.
From 1952 until 1973 Scott's assignment was to roam the globe collecting observations and information for in-depth research reports to be used by the magazine's staff. The resulting book-length reports provided such detail and perspective on world conditions that they were in great demand even beyond the Time staff. Among the reports are: The U.S. Military Presence in Europe and the Middle East (1952); Western Europe's Economic Revival (1953); The Middle East (1954); Latin America in Travail (1955); East of Suez - The Asian Subcontinent (1956); Asian Journey - A Study of Southeast Asia (1957); The Soviet Empire - The U.S.S.R. and Its Satellites (1959); Africa - The Frontier Continent (1959); The New Europe - Can Six and Seven Make One? (1961); The Soviet Economic Offensive: A Report on Public Diplomacy (1961); Crisis in Communist China (1962); How Much Progress: A Report on the Alianza para el Progreso (1963); The Soviet World - Growth, Disintegration and Reform (1965); Hunger - A Report on the World Food Crisis (1966), Peace in Asia - The War in Vietnam in Context (1967); The Middle East at War (1970), and Detente Through Soviet Eyes (1974). In addition to these reports for Time, Scott published several books. Behind the Urals, issued in 1942, described his life in the Russian steel factories. His second book, Duel for Europe: Stalin vs. Hitler appeared in the same year, and it was followed in 1945 by Europe in Revolution. Political Warfare: A Guide to Competitive Coexistence (1955) was a study of ideological conflict in the Cold War era. As its subtitle indicated, Democracy Is Not Enough (1960) was a personal survey of hunger in the underdeveloped nations.
Other titles include Man's Struggle to Feed Himself (1969); Divided They Stand (1973); and China, the Hungry Dragon (1967).
In 1973 Scott resigned to become vice-president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a position he held at the time of his death in 1976.
