Karl Radek

For more information on Karl Bernhardovich Radek, visit Britannica.com.

(b. Lemberg (LVOV), 1885; d. in prison camp? 1939) Russian; secretary of the Communist International 1920 – 6; member of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party 1920 – 5 Never a top leader and never popular with his colleagues, Radek's strength was as a revolutionary activist and journalist in several countries and an adviser on foreign, especially German, affairs. Born in Polish Galicia (then Austria-Hungary), he was active in the Social Democratic Party there from 1901 and studied at Cracow University. Imprisoned for his participation in the 1905 events, he later worked in revolutionary circles in Poland, Switzerland, and Germany till the First World War. During the war he attended the Zimmerwald and Kienthal anti-war conferences in Switzerland. He developed contacts between the German government and the pacifist groups and in April 1917 accompanied Lenin across Germany to Russia, where he took part in the Brest — Litovsk negotiations and directed the Central European Section of the Commissariat of International Affairs. In 1918 he worked in Berlin, helping to found the German Communist Party, and was imprisoned there in 1919. He returned to Russia in 1920 and became one of the leaders of the Communist International and a member of the party's Central Committee. He lost these positions in 1925 after siding with Trotsky and became rector of the Sun-Yat-Sen Communist University in Moscow (for far-eastern students). He was expelled from the party in 1927 but was re-admitted in 1930 after recanting and became a Stalin apologist and a Foreign Affairs commentator for Izvestiya. But he was arrested in 1936, accused of treason and at a show trial in 1937 was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. He died in the camps, probably in 1939. He was fully rehabilitated in 1988.

The Russian Communist leader and publicist Karl Bernardovich Radek (1885-1939) is best known for his brilliant and acerbic polemics. He was an out standing apostle of internationalism.

Karl Radek was born Karl Sobelsohn in Lvov (then in Austrian Poland) to an Austrophile Jewish family. As a youth, he rejected his family's outlook and became involved in political agitation, moving to Switzerland in 1904. There he joined the left wing of Polish socialism, returning to Poland in 1905 to participate in revolutionary activity in Warsaw. After a brief prison term, Radek spent the next decade building his reputation, in both Poland and Germany, as a talented but volatile and often irresponsible journalist. His barbed comments so irritated leading Socialists that he was successively expelled from the Polish and German Socialist parties.

During World War I Radek returned to Switzerland, where he alternately collaborated with and contended with V. I. Lenin in the Zimmerwald Movement, an organization of antiwar Socialists. After the overthrow of the Czar in March 1917, Radek accompanied Lenin in the "sealed train" across Germany, but he was not allowed to enter Russia. He then spent several months in Stockholm organizing Bolshevik support among European Socialists, and after the Bolshevik coup in November 1917 he proceeded to Moscow. There he became responsible for foreign-language propaganda, accompanying Leon Trotsky to Brest Litovsk, where he propagandized German troops. At the end of 1918, after the collapse of the imperial regime in Germany, Radek returned to Berlin in order to help organize the German Communist party. Though he counseled against a German uprising, the "Spartacus" Putsch of January 1919 led to his incarceration for almost a year.

Upon his return to Moscow, Radek was assigned major roles in the Communist International (Comintern), where he enjoyed great influence, particularly in the German Communist party. His multilingual talents, his bizarre personal appearance - some of his contemporaries likened him to an ape - and his extraordinary sense of humor made him a great favorite of journalists in Moscow. From 1919 to 1923 Radek enjoyed considerable prominence both within and without Russia.

However, his political enemy Grigori Zinoviev used the collapse of the German revolution of 1923 to exclude Radek from the Comintern and high party posts. Under the influence of his new mistress, Larissa Reissner, Radek withdrew from party politics, and in 1925 he became rector of Sun Yat-sen University in Moscow. When Larissa died in 1926, Radek openly joined the Trotskyite opposition, with which he had long been identified; in 1927 he was expelled from the Bolshevik party and subsequently exiled to Siberia. In 1929 Radek renounced Trotsky and returned to Moscow to become once again a major publicist - for Stalin - although he never recovered his Comintern or party posts.

In 1936 Radek was one of the coauthors of the new Soviet constitution. However, later that year he was arrested for treason, and in a show trial in January 1937 Radek was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. Though rumors of his survival persisted, Radek apparently died in prison sometime in 1939.

Further Reading

The only biography of Radek is Warren Lerner, Karl Radek: The Last Internationalist (1970).

Additional Sources

Tuck, Jim, Engine of mischief: an analytical biography of Karl Radek, New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.

(1885 - 1939), revolutionary internationalist and publicist.

Born Karl Sobelsohn to Jewish parents in Lvov, Karl Radek dedicated his life to international revolution and political writing. He was active in socialist circles from age sixteen and in 1904 joined the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. Before World War I, Radek moved comfortably among Europe's Marxist revolutionaries. He became a member of the German Social Democratic Party's left wing in 1908, and wrote on party tactics and international affairs for the party's press.

Radek opposed World War I and was active in the Zimmerwald movement, an international socialist antiwar movement organized in 1915. He joined the Bolsheviks after the 1917 Revolution and was a delegate to the Brest-Litovsk peace talks, although he opposed the treaty and supported the Left Communist opposition. Nonetheless, in 1918, he became the head of the Central European Section of the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs and helped to organize the founding congress of the German Communist Party. In 1919, he was elected to the Bolshevik Party's Central Committee and became the Comintern secretary. He was removed from this post in 1920, but remained a member of the Comintern's executive committee and the Central Committee, and was active in German communist affairs until 1924.

In 1924, Radek sided with Trotsky's Left Opposition and in consequence was removed from the Central Committee. That same year he also opposed changes in Comintern policy and thus was removed from its executive committee. He was expelled from the Party in 1927 and exiled. After recanting his errors in 1929, he was readmitted to the Party and became the director of the Central Committee's information bureau and an adviser to Joseph Stalin on foreign affairs. Radek helped to craft the 1936 Soviet constitution, but later that year he was arrested and again expelled from the Party. At his January 1937 Moscow show trial, he was convicted of being a Trotskyist agent and sentenced to ten years in prison. He died in 1939.

Radek published routinely in the Soviet press and authored several books on Comintern and international affairs.

Bibliography

Lerner, Warren. (1970). Karl Radek: The Last Internationalist. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Radek, Karl B., with Haupt, Georges (1974). "Karl Bern-hardovich Radek." In Makers of the Russian Revolution, ed. Georges Haupt and Jean-Jacques Marie, tr.C.I.P. Ferdinand and D.M. Bellos. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

—WILLIAM J. CHASE

Karl Radek

Karl Berngardovich Radek (October 31, 1885 - May 19, 1939) was a socialist active in the Polish and German movements before World War I and an international Communist leader after the Russian Revolution.

Contents 1 Life 1.1 Germany 1.2 Comintern and after 2 Notes 3 External links

Life

He was born in Lviv, Austria-Hungary (now in Ukraine), as Karol Sobelsohn, to a Jewish family. He took the name "Radek" from a favourite character in a book (perhaps Syzyfowe prace by Stefan Żeromski). He joined the Polish Social Democratic movement in 1904 and participated in the 1905 Revolution in Warsaw.

Germany

In 1907 he moved to Germany, joined the SPD and worked on various party newspapers until he was expelled in 1913 under unclear circumstances.^[1] After the outbreak of World War I he moved to Switzerland where he worked as a liaison between Vladimir Lenin and the Bremen Left, with which he had close links from his time in Germany.

In 1917 after the October Revolution he traveled to Petrograd and became an active Bolshevik functionary. He was one of the passengers on the "sealed train" that carried Lenin and other Russian revolutionaries through Germany after the February Revolution in Russia. He was in Germany in 1918-20 organising the German Communist movement.

Comintern and after

Radek, together with the Comintern member Dmitry Manuilsky, made an unsuccessful attempt to launch a second German revolution in October 1923, before Lenin died.^[2]

In 1920 Radek returned to Russia and became a secretary of the Comintern but his influence decreased and he lost his place on the Central Committee in 1924, being expelled from the Party in 1927. However, he was re-admitted in 1930 and helped to write the 1936 Soviet Constitution, but during the Great Purge of the 1930s, he was accused of treason and confessed at the Trial of the Seventeen (1937, also called the Second Moscow Trial). He was sentenced to 10 years of penal labor.

He was reportedly killed in a labor camp in a fight with another inmate. However, during the investigations during the Khrushchev Thaw it was established that he was killed by an NKVD operative under direct orders from Lavrentiy Beria.^[2][3] Radek is also credited with originating a number of political jokes about Joseph Stalin.^[4] He was exonerated in 1988.^[2]

Notes

1. ^ Schorske, Carl: German Social Democracy, 1905-1917, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) & London 1983, pp. 254-255; Nettl, Peter: Rosa Luxemburg (Abridged edition), Oxford University Press, London, Oxford & New York 1969, pp.315-317, 353-356.
2. ^ ^{a b c} (Russian) Karl Radek's biography article on hronos.ru
3. ^ (Russian) Document describing the murder of Radek and another political immate, Sokolnikov
4. ^ "In spite of his [Radek's] confession and reinstatement, he was bitterly critical of the government, and was credited with inventing most of the anti-government jokes then circulating in Moscow." Poretsky, Elisabeth (1969). Our Own People. University of Michigan Press. pp. 185. 

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Karl Radek

• Works by Karl Radek available at the Marxists Internet Archive.

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