Karl Radek

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Karl Radek

Karl Berngardovich Radek (October 31, 1885 - May 19, 1939) was a socialist

Socialism

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating public or state ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and a society characterized by equality for all individuals, with a fair or Egalitarianism method of compensation....
active in the Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian Enclave and exclave, to the north....
and German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
movements

Social democracy

Social democracy is a political philosophy of the left-wing politics or centre-left that emerged in the late 19th century from the socialism movement and continues to exert influence worldwide....
before World War I

World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
and an international Communist

Communism

Communism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarianism, classlessness, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general....
leader after the Russian Revolution.

Life
He was born in Lemberg

Lviv

Lviv is a major city in western Ukraine.It is regarded as one of the main Ukrainian culture. In 2001, it had 725,000 inhabitants, of whom 88 per cent were Ukrainians, 9 per cent Russians and 1 per cent Poles....
, Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the Kaiserlich und k?niglich Monarchy was a state in Central Europe ruled by the House of Habsburg, constitutionally a personal union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary....
(now Lviv, Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south....
), as Karol Sobelsohn, to a Jewish family.

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Encyclopedia

Karl Berngardovich Radek (October 31, 1885 - May 19, 1939) was a socialist

Socialism

Poland

Germany

Social democracy

World War I

Communism

Life

He was born in Lemberg

Lviv

Austria-Hungary

Ukraine

Stefan Zeromski

Stefan Zeromski was a Poland novelist and dramatist. He was called the "conscience of Polish literature". He also wrote under the pen names: Maurycy Zych, J?zef Katerla and Stefan Iksmorez....
). He joined the Polish Social Democratic movement in 1904 and participated in the 1905 Revolution

Russian Revolution of 1905

The 1905 Russian Revolution is a historical term describing a wave of political terrorism, strikes, peasant unrests, mutinies, both anti-government and undirected, that swept through vast areas of the Russian Empire, leading to the establishment of the State Duma of the Russian Empire, multi-party system and the Russian Constitution of 1906....
in Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the Capital and World's largest cities of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains....
.

Germany

In 1907 he moved to Germany, joined the SPD

Social Democratic Party of Germany

The Social Democratic Party of Germany is Germany's oldest political party. After World War II, under the leadership of Kurt Schumacher, the SPD reestablished itself as an ideological party, representing the interests of the working class and the trade unions....
and worked on various party newspapers until he was expelled in 1913 under unclear circumstances. After the outbreak of World War I he moved to Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland is a landlocked Swiss Alps country of roughly 7.7 million people in Western Europe with an area of 41,285 km?. Switzerland is a federal republic consisting of 26 states called Cantons of Switzerland....
where he worked as a liaison between Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin , born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov and also known by the pseudonyms V.I. Lenin and N. Lenin, was a Russians revolutionary, a Bolshevik Communism politician, the principal leader of the October Revolution and the first head of the USSR....
and the Bremen Left, with which he had close links from his time in Germany. 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 took an anti-war stance during World War I while living in Switzerland and Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic countries on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and it is connected to Denmark by the ?resund Bridge in the south....
. In 1917 after the October Revolution he traveled to Petrograd

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a types of inhabited localities in Russia and a federal subjects of Russia of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea....
and became an active Bolshevik

Bolshevik

Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists were a faction of the Marxism Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the 2nd Congress of the RSDLP in 1903 and ultimately became the Communist Party of the Soviet Union....
functionary. He was in Germany

Germany

Communist Party of Germany

The Communist Party of Germany was a major political party in Germany between 1918 and 1933, and a minor party in West Germany in the postwar period....
movement.

Comintern and after

Radek, together with the Comintern

Comintern

The 'Comintern' was an international Communism organization founded in Moscow in March 1919. The International intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the Sta...
member Dmitry Manuilsky

Dmitry Manuilsky

Dmitry Manuilsky, or D. Z. Manuilsky was an important Bolshevik. He was the son of an Orthodox priest from a Ukrainian village. After secondary school he enrolled in the University of St....
, made an unsuccessful attempt to launch a second German revolution in October 1923, before Lenin died.

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

Central Committee

Central Committee most commonly refers to the central executive unit of a Leninist or Communist party, whether ruling or non-ruling. In a Communist party, the Central Committee is made up of delegates elected at a Party Congress....
in 1924, being expelled from the Party in 1927. However, he was re-admitted in 1930 and helped to write the 1936 Soviet Constitution

1936 Soviet Constitution

The 1936 Soviet constitution, adopted on December 5, 1936, and also known as the "Stalin" constitution, redesigned the government of the Soviet Union....
, but during the Great Purge

Great Purge

Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1936-1938. Also described as a "Soviet holocaust" by several authors, it involved the purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, repression of kulaks, Red Army leadership, and the persecution of unaffiliat...
of the 1930s, he was accused of treason and confessed at the Trial of the Seventeen (1937, also called the Second Moscow Trial

Moscow Trials

The Moscow Trials were a series of trials of political opponents of Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge. Many of the defendants were executed....
). He was sentenced to 10 years of penal labor.

He was reportedly killed in a labor camp

Labor camp

A labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons....
in a fight with another inmate. However, during the investigations during the Khrushchev Thaw

Khrushchev Thaw

Khrushchev's Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when political repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed, and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, because Nikita Khrushchev initiated de-Stalinisation of Soviet life and the policy of peaceful coe...
it was established that he was killed by an NKVD

NKVD

The NKVD or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the leading secret police organization of the Soviet Union that was responsible for Soviet political repressions during the Stalinism era....
operative under direct orders from Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Soviet Union politician, and chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin. He was top deputy of the NKVD during the Great Purge, responsible for many of the millions of imprisonments and killings....
.

Radek is also credited with originating a number of political jokes

Russian political jokes

Russian political jokes are a part of Russian humour and can be naturally grouped into the major time periods: Imperial Russia, Soviet Union and finally post-Soviet Russia....
about Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953....
.

He was exonerated in 1988.

External links

available at the Marxists Internet Archive
Marxists Internet Archive

Marxists Internet Archive is a volunteer based non-profit organization that maintains a multi-lingual Internet archive of Marxism writers and other similar authors on the website ....
.