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 before World War I and a Communist International leader in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution.
Radek was born to a Jewish family in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary. He joined the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and took part in the 1905 Russian Revolution in Congress Poland. Two years later he was forced to flee to Germany, where he worked as a journalist for the Social Democratic Party of Germany. After the outbreak of World War I, Radek relocated to Switzerland and became an associate of Vladimir Lenin. Following the February Revolution, Radek helped organize the return of Lenin and other Russian revolutionaries to Russia, though he himself was denied entry until after the October Revolution. As Vice-Commissar for Foreign Affairs, he took part in the negotiations of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. He helped establish the Communist Party of Germany after the revolution began, and spent a year in prison for his role in the Spartacist uprising.
After returning to Russia, Radek became a member of the Comintern Executive Committee. The failure of the revolution in Germany, as well as his support for Leon Trotsky against Joseph 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 the Great Purge Radek was accused of treason and arrested. He was found guilty as a chief defendant at the second Moscow Trial in 1937 and sentenced to 10 years of penal labor. He died in a labor camp in the Urals two years later.
Karl Berngardovich Radek (Russian: Карл Бернгардович Радек; 31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a revolutionary and writer active in the Polish and German...
politician Radek Smoleňák, Czech ice hockey player Radek Štěpánek, Czech tennis player Radek Zelenka, character in Stargate:Atlantis KarlRadek (1885–1939)...
Hamburg at the Barricades. During her stay in Germany she had become KarlRadek's lover. On her return to Russia she and Raskolnikov divorced in January...
debunk the emerging mythology of Schlageter by circulating a speech by KarlRadek portraying him as an honourable but misguided figure. It was the Nazi...
medical grounds in 1916, settling in Switzerland and associating with KarlRadek, Grigory Zinoviev and Vladimir Lenin, becoming a part of the bureau of...
such as Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, KarlRadek, Georgy Pyatakov, etc. Verdicts of Moscow trials were pre-defined by Joseph...
Vladimir Lenin was initially hostile to Rakovsky, and at one point wrote to KarlRadek that "we [the Bolsheviks] do not have the same road as his kind of people"...
Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Nikolai Bukharin, and KarlRadek, though the latter two had less active input. The 1936 Constitution enumerated...
Communist Party heavyweights Nikolai Bukharin, Lazar Kaganovich, and KarlRadek, Soviet Marshals Aleksandr Yegorov, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, and Semyon Budyonny...
repugnant. In September 1918 she called the threats made by Lenin's friend KarlRadek to "slaughter the bourgeoisie" after an attempted assassination of Lenin...
debasement, Pilnyak acted courageously in secret. When he heard that KarlRadek, a prominent member of the left wing opposition, was living in hardship...
replies, "Because I criticized KarlRadek." The first man responds, "But I am here because I spoke out in favor of Radek!" They turn to the third man who...
Opposition, the author of The New Economics. Georgy Pyatakov (1890–1937). KarlRadek (1885–1939). Christian Rakovsky (1873–1941). Timofei Sapronov (1887–1937)...
lesser figures known as the "anti-Soviet Trotskyite-centre" which included KarlRadek, Yuri Piatakov and Grigory Sokolnikov, and were accused of plotting with...
KarlRadek and suggested a policy to him that they were already calling 'National Bolshevism' (although it has also been suggested that it was Radek who...
within days of the March on Rome by Benito Mussolini and his PNF in Italy. KarlRadek lamented the proceedings in Italy as the "largest defeat suffered by socialism...
policy. During the mid-1920s the party began recruiting Arab members. KarlRadek, as head of the Comintern's Eastern department, instructed the PCP that...
from the Russian Communist Party (RCP), including: Grigory Zinoviev, KarlRadek, Mikhail Pavlovich, and Anatoly Skachko. Non-RCP delegates delivering...
30 January 1937.: 113 This trial involved 17 lesser figures including KarlRadek, Yuri Pyatakov, Grigory Sokolnikov, and Leonid Serebryakov. Alexander...
Trotsky a standing ovation. This upset the troika, already infuriated by KarlRadek's article, "Leon Trotsky – Organiser of Victory" published in Pravda on...
husband and moved to Berlin. She visited the Comintern representative KarlRadek many times while he was interned in Moabit prison, acting as his contact...
Thirteen of the defendants are sentenced to death, while the rest, including KarlRadek and Grigory Sokolnikov are sent to labor camps and later murdered. They...
with the command of an armored train that conveyed Grigory Zinoviev, KarlRadek, Béla Kun, and John Reed from the Second Congress of the Communist International...
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