Karl Radek | |
|---|---|
| Карл Радек | |
 Radekc. 1920s | |
| Vice Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Russian SFSR | |
| In office 1917–1919 | |
| Commissar | Leon Trotsky Georgy Chicherin |
| Preceded by | Office established |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Karol Sobelsohn (1885-10-31)31 October 1885 Lemberg, Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 19 May 1939(1939-05-19) (aged 53) Verkhneuralsk,Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
| Citizenship | Russian Empire Soviet Union |
| Political party | |
| Spouses |
|
| Children | Sofia Karlovna Radek |
| Occupation | Revolutionary, writer, journalist, publicist, politician, theorist |
| Known for | Marxist revolutionary activism |
Karl Berngardovich Radek (Russian:Карл Бернгардович Радек; 31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a revolutionary and writer active in the Polish and German social democratic movements beforeWorld War I and aCommunist International leader in theSoviet Union after theRussian Revolution.
Radek was born to a Jewish family inLemberg,Austria-Hungary. He joined theSocial Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and took part in the1905 Russian Revolution inCongress Poland. Two years later he was forced to flee to Germany, where he worked as a journalist for theSocial Democratic Party of Germany. After the outbreak ofWorld War I, Radek relocated to Switzerland and became an associate ofVladimir Lenin. Following theFebruary Revolution, Radek helped organize the return of Lenin and other Russian revolutionaries to Russia, though he himself was denied entry until after theOctober Revolution. As Vice-Commissar for Foreign Affairs, he took part in the negotiations of theTreaty of Brest-Litovsk. He helped establish theCommunist Party of Germany after therevolution began, and spent a year in prison for his role in theSpartacist uprising.
After returning to Russia, Radek became a member of theComintern Executive Committee. The failure of the revolution in Germany, as well as his support forLeon Trotsky againstJoseph Stalin, ultimately led to his fall from power and expulsion from the Party. He later recanted his views and was re-admitted to the Party. Nevertheless, during theGreat Purge Radek was accused of treason and arrested. He was found guilty as a chief defendant at the secondMoscow Trial in 1937 and sentenced to 10 years of penal labor. He died in alabor camp in theUrals two years later.
Radek was born inLemberg,Austria-Hungary (nowLviv inUkraine), asKarol Sobelsohn, to aLitvak (Lithuanian Jewish) family; his father, Bernhard, worked in the post office and died whilst Karl was young.[1]: 2 He took the nameRadek from a favourite character,Andrzej Radek, inSyzyfowe prace ('The Labors of Sisyphus', 1897) byStefan Żeromski.[1]: 5
Radek joined theSocial Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) in 1904. When the1905 Russian Revolution broke out (includinguprisings across the Kingdom of Poland), Radek participated as a revolutionary organiser inWarsaw, where he had responsibility for the party's newspaperCzerwony Sztandar.[2]: 635
In 1907, after his arrest in Poland and his escape from custody, Radek moved toLeipzig in Germany and joined theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), working on the Party'sLeipziger Volkszeitung.[2]: 36 He re-located toBremen, where he worked forBremer Bürgerzeitung, in 1911, and was one of several who attackedKarl Kautsky's analysis of imperialism inDie Neue Zeit in May 1912.[2]: 36–27
In September 1910, Radek was accused by members of the Polish Socialist Party of stealing books, clothes and money from party comrades, as part of ananti-semitic campaign against the SDKPiL[citation needed]. On this occasion, he was vigorously defended by the SDKPiL leaders,Rosa Luxemburg andLeo Jogiches. The following year, however, the SDKPiL changed its course, partly because of a personality clash between Jogiches andVladimir Lenin, during which younger members of the party, led byYakov Hanecki, and including Radek, had sided with Lenin. Wanting to make an example of Radek, Jogiches revived the charges of theft, and convened a party commission in December 1911 to investigate. He dissolved the commission in July 1912, after it had failed to come to any conclusion, and in August pushed a decision through the party court expelling Radek. In their written finding, they revealed his alias, making it — he claimed — dangerous for him to stay in Russian occupied Poland.[3]: 584–586
In 1912August Thalheimer invited Radek to go toGöppingen (near Stuttgart) to temporarily replace him in control of the local SPD party newspaperFreie Volkszeitung, which had financial difficulties. Radek accused the local party leadership inWürttemberg of assisting revisionists to strangle the newspaper due to the paper's hostility to them.[3]: 470–1 The 1913 SPD Congress noted Radek's expulsion and then went on to decide in principle that no-one who had been expelled from a sister-party could join another party within theSecond International and retrospectively applied this rule to Radek. Within the SPDAnton Pannekoek andKarl Liebknecht opposed this move, as did others in the International such asLeon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin,[3] some of whom participated in the "Paris Commission" set up by the International.[2]: 891
After the outbreak of World War I Radek moved toSwitzerland where he worked as a liaison between Lenin and theBremen Left, with whom he had close links from his time in Germany, introducing him toPaul Levi at this time.[2]: 87 He took part in theZimmerwald Conference in 1915, siding with theleft.[2]: 892
During World War I, Radek engaged in polemics withVladimir Lenin over the subject of the IrishEaster Rising of 1916; while Lenin was strongly enthusiastic about the Rising, seeing it as a blow toBritish imperialism, Radek disagreed. Basing his view onTheodore Rothstein, he claimed that, what he called the "Sinn Féin movement" was petit-bourgeois and that the backbone of earlier rebellions in Ireland, the peasant farmer, had been placated at the start of the century by the British government. In his articleThe End of a Song, Radek claimed efforts to restore theIrish language to official status were flawed because it was "medieval".Leon Trotsky held a view halfway between Radek and Lenin.
In 1917 Radek was one of the passengers on thesealed train that carried Lenin and other Russian revolutionaries through Germany after theFebruary Revolution in Russia.[2]: 87 However, he was refused entry to Russia[2]: 892 and went on to Stockholm, where he produced German-language versions of Bolshevik documents and other information translated from Russian, which he published in the journalsRussische Korrespondenz-Pravda andBote der Russischen Revolution.[2]: 87
After theOctober Revolution and the onset of theRussian Civil War, Radek arrived inPetrograd and became Vice-Commissar for Foreign Affairs,[1] taking part in theBrest-Litovsk treaty negotiations, as well as being responsible for distribution of Bolshevik propaganda amongst German troops and prisoners of war.[2]: 893 During the discussions around signing the treaty, Radek was one of the advocates of a revolutionary war.[4]: 453
After being refused recognition as an official representative of the Bolshevik regime,[2]: 893 Radek and other delegates —Adolph Joffe,Nikolai Bukharin,Christian Rakovsky and Ignatov — traveled to the GermanCongress of Soviets.[5] After they were turned back at the border, Radek alone crossed the German border illegally in December 1918, arriving in Berlin on 19 or 20 December,[3]: 467 where he participated in discussions and conferences leading to foundation of theCommunist Party of Germany (KPD).[5] Radek was arrested after theSpartacist uprising on 12 February 1919 and held inMoabit Prison until his release in January 1920.[5] While he was in Moabit, the attitude of the German authorities towards the Bolsheviks changed. The idea of creating an alliance of nations that had suffered from theVersailles treaty — principally Germany, Russia and Turkey — gained currency in Berlin, as a result of which Radek was allowed to receive a stream of visitors in his prison cell, includingWalter Rathenau,Arthur Holitscher,Enver Pasha, andRuth Fischer.[6][7]
On his return to Russia Radek became the Secretary of theComintern, taking the main responsibility for German issues. He was removed from this position after he supported the KPD in opposing inviting representatives of theCommunist Workers' Party of Germany to attend the 2nd Congress of the Comintern, pitting him against the Comintern's executive and theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union.[2]: 893–4 It was Radek who took up the slogan of Stuttgart communists of fighting for aunited front with other working-class organisations, that later formed the basis for the strategy developed by the Comintern.[8]
In mid-1923, Radek made his controversial speech 'Leo Schlageter: The Wanderer into the Void'[9] at an open session of theExecutive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI).[1]: 120 In the speech he praised the actions of the GermanFreikorps officerLeo Schlageter who had been shot whilst engaging in sabotage against French troops occupying theRuhr area; in doing so Radek sought to explain the reasons why men like Schlageter were drawn towards the far left, and attempted to channel national grievances away fromchauvinism and towards support of the working movement and the Communists.[1]: 122
Although Radek was not atChemnitz when the decision to cancel theuprising in November 1923 took place at the KPD Zentrale, he subsequently approved the decision and defended it.[10]: 897
At subsequent congresses of the Russian Communist Party and meetings of the ECCI, Radek and Brandler were made the scapegoats for the defeat of the revolution byZinoviev, with Radek being removed from the ECCI at theFifth Congress of the Comintern.[1]: 128–132
Radek was part of theLeft Opposition from 1923, writing his article 'Leon Trotsky: Organizer of Victory'[11] shortly after Lenin's stroke in January of that year.[1]: 127 Later in the year at theThirteenth Party Congress Radek was removed from the Central Committee.[1]: 130
In the summer of 1925, Radek was appointed Provost of the newly establishedSun Yat-Sen University[1]: 135 in Moscow, where he collected information for the opposition from students about the situation in China and cautiously began to challenge the official Comintern policy.[1]: 139–140 However, the terminal illness of Radek's lover,Larissa Reissner, saw Radek lose his inhibitions and he began publicly criticising Stalin, in particular debating Stalin's doctrine ofSocialism in One Country at theCommunist Academy.[1]: 140 Radek was sacked from his post at Sun Yat-Sen University in May 1927.[1]: 147
Radek was expelled from the Party in 1927 after helping to organise an independent demonstration on the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution withGrigory Zinoviev inLeningrad.[4]: 611 In early 1928, when prominent oppositionists were deported to various remote locations within theSoviet Union, Radek was sent toTobolsk[2] and a few months later moved on toTomsk.[1]: 150
On 10 July 1929, Radek, alongside other oppositionistsIvar Smilga andYevgeni Preobrazhensky, signed a document capitulating to Stalin,[12]: 157 with Radek being held in particular disdain by oppositionist circles for his betrayal ofYakov Blumkin, who had been carrying a secret letter from Trotsky, in exile in Turkey, to Radek.[13]: 115 However, he was re-admitted in 1930 and was one of the few former oppositionists to retain a prominent place within the party, heading the International Information Bureau of the Russian Communist Party Central Committee[13]: 114 as well as giving the address on foreign literature at the First Conference of theUnion of Soviet Writers in 1934.[1]: 160 In that speech, he denouncedMarcel Proust andJames Joyce. He said that "in the pages of Proust, the old world, like a mangy dog no longer capable of any action whatever, lies basking in the sun and endlessly licks its sores" and compared Joyce'sUlysses to "a heap of dung, crawling with worms, photographed by a cinema apparatus through a microscope."[14]
Later in his life he adopted a position that the Soviet government should be close to Germany. In 1934 he was interviewed by a German politician, at which both of them deplored the hostile drift of their respective governments, and Radek made a controversial remark: "There are some fine lads in the SA and SS."[15] In 1936 he congratulatedGeneral Ernst Köstring on the day Germanyoccupied theRhineland, along withMikhail Tukhachevsky.[16] He helped to write the1936 Soviet Constitution but, during theGreat Purge of the 1930s, he was accused of treason and confessed, after two and a half months of interrogation,[13]: 115 at the Trial of the Seventeen in 1937, the so-called SecondMoscow Trial. He was sentenced to 10 years ofpenal labor.
He was reportedly killed in alabor camp on Stalin's orders following a fight with a fellow Left Opposition inmate named Varezhnikov.[17] According to an investigation of the Central Committee of the CPSU and theKGB after theKhrushchev Thaw, his murder was organized under the Supervision of the senior NKVD operative Pyotr Kubatkin.[18]
Radek has been credited with originating a number ofpolitical jokes aboutJoseph Stalin.[19]: 185 He was posthumouslyrehabilitated in 1988, underMikhail Gorbachev.
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