Writings of Karl Radek: The "Left Opposition" in Soviet Russia
(A collection of essays and pamphlets from Karl Radek, the...)
A collection of essays and pamphlets from Karl Radek, the Russian Communist who became a leader in the "Left Opposition" faction within the Bolshevik Party, advocating party democracy and a greater role for the rank-and-file trade unions in the Soviet state.
Proletarian Dictatorship and Terrorism (Classic Reprint)
(It has been suggested that when one is confronted with th...)
It has been suggested that when one is confronted with that unlovely spectacle, the revolutionary turned cautious, one should be very chary of attributing unworthy motives to him in explanation of the change, as the case of the seeming apostate is really one that calls for pathological investigation. An obvious objection to this view is that if the perversion is due to the operation of some as yet undiscovered disease, the peculiar malady generally strikes its victim at a time when he has just been made the recipient of some signal favor by his (capitalist) government. However, in these days of disillusionments, one is sometimes tempted to believe that there may be some truth in the theory. The experience thatS ocialists had of seeing a number of men whom they had respected and looked up to as leaders coming out, one after another, in support of the late war, was calculated to damp considerably their faith in human nature. There is, to be sure, the consolation that the plague of Intellectuals that has for so many years afflicted theS ocialist movement in Great Britain and other advanced capitalist countries, is likely to find its sphere of operations severely restricted in a time of future crisis. The shameful desertion of the principles professed during periods of comparative calm by the gentlemen who were kind enough to come down from their high estate and lead us, was too flagrant to escape the notice of even the least observant. (O ne of these champions of the proletariat, Mr. H. M. Hyndman, used to be very fond of telling us that the phenomenon of superior people like himself coming down to direct the movement of the workers, was one that was common throughout history. (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and M
Engine of Mischief: An Analytical Biography of Karl Radek (Contributions in Political Science)
(Tuck's work is an attempt at the rehabilitation of Karl R...)
Tuck's work is an attempt at the rehabilitation of Karl Radek, a sidekick of Lenin's who fell victim to Stalin's vengeance in the 1930s. Though not a full-scale academic biography, it is satisfying and fast-moving without being superficial, and offers an intellectually intriguing thesis. . . . Where others have seen betrayal, Tuck sees Radek the mischief maker. Although Radek implicated many guiltless people and testified to lies, Tuck argues Radek's performance was a master stroke of mischief making, turning the tables against Vyshinsky, showing up and revealing the truth about the show trials themselves. Choice The enigmatic Karl Radek, a victim of the Moscow purge trials, was by turns a Pole, a Jew, a West European social democrat, a Soviet official, a Trotskyist, and a Stalinist. A born iconoclast, he began his career by attacking established political orders and ended it by defending one of the world's most blatant tyrannies. Tuck opens this analytical biography with an account of Radek's atypical early adolescence and then traces the evolution of Radek's political thought from Polish nationalism to patriotic and later international socialism. Radek's six years in Germany were marked by his journalistic success and subsequent disgrace as well as his expulsion from the German and Polish social-democratic parties. His fortunes turned when he joined Lenin in Switzerland, and thereafter he established himself as one of the leading rightists in the Communist movement. His romantic liaison with Larissa Reissner, his allegiance to Trotsky and later to Stalin, and his downfall following the publication of his satire on Stalin are treated in subsequent chapters. The work then presents an account of Radek's trial and banishment to the Gulag and an analysis of Radek's ultimate fate. It concludes with an overall assessment that challenges Arthur Koestler's evaluation of the man.
The Russian Communist leader and publicist Karl Bernardovich Radek is best known for his brilliant and acerbic polemics. He was an out standing apostle of internationalism.
Background
Karl Radek was born Karl Sobelsohn in Lvovin Lemberg, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv in Ukraine), as Karol Sobelsohn, to a Jewish Litvak family; his father, Bernhard, worked in the post office and died whilst Karl was young. He took the name Radek from a favourite character, Andrzej Radek, in Syzyfowe prace ('The Labor of Sisyphus', 1897) by Stefan Żeromski.
Career
As a youth, Radek 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 Karl was arrested for treason, and in a show trial in January 1937 Radek was sentenced to 10 year's imprisonment. Though rumors of his survival persisted, Radek apparently died in prison sometime in 1939.
Radek was part of the Left Opposition from 1923, writing his famed article 'Leon Trotsky: Organizer of Victory' shortly after Lenin's stroke in January of that year. Later in the year at the Thirteenth Party Congress Radek was removed from the Central Committee.
In the summer of 1925, Radek was appointed Provost of the newly established Sun Yat-Sen University in Moscow, where Radek collected information for the opposition from students about the situation in China and cautiously began to challenge the official Comintern policy. However, the terminal illness of Radek's lover, Larisa Reisner, saw Radek lose his inhibitions and he began publicly criticising Stalin, in particular debating Stalin's doctrine of Socialism in One Country at the Communist Academy. Radek was sacked from his post at Sun Yat-Sen University in May 1927.
Radek was expelled from the Party in 1927 after helping to organise an independent demonstration on the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution with Grigory Zinoviev in Leningrad. In early 1928, when prominent oppositionists were deported to various remote locations within the Soviet Union, Radek was sent to Tobolsk and a few months later moved on to Tomsk.
Karl belonged to Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), Social Democratic Party of Germany(SPD), Communist Party of Germany (KPD), Comintern, Communist Workers' Party of Germany, Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
Views
Quotations:
"A Labour party is not a debating club, it is a party of action."
"Every social organisation which is rooted in life still lasts a long time, even after the conditions from which it drew its strength have changed in a manner unfavourable to it."
"Without Socialism the working class is a heterogeneous mixture of different categories, some of which have independent, varying interests, sometimes opposed to each other."
"Thus in such a Labour Party there can be no question of independent policy."
"The mass of workers, as yet non-Socialist, is retarded in its development towards Socialism."
Connections
Radek's first spouse was Rosa Mavrikievna Radek. They had a daughter, Sofia Karlovna Radek. Also he had a lover: Larisa Reisner.
Wife:
Rosa Radek
Daughter:
Sofia Karlovna Radek
Lover:
Larisa Reisner
References
Engine of Mischief: An Analytical Biography of Karl Radek (Contributions in Political Science)
Tuck's work is an attempt at the rehabilitation of Karl Radek, a sidekick of Lenin's who fell victim to Stalin's vengeance in the 1930s. Though not a full-scale academic biography, it is satisfying and fast-moving without being superficial, and offers an intellectually intriguing thesis. . . . Where others have seen betrayal, Tuck sees Radek the mischief maker. Although Radek implicated many guiltless people and testified to lies, Tuck argues Radek's performance was a master stroke of mischief making, turning the tables against Vyshinsky, showing up and revealing the truth about the show trials themselves. Choice The enigmatic Karl Radek, a victim of the Moscow purge trials, was by turns a Pole, a Jew, a West European social democrat, a Soviet official, a Trotskyist, and a Stalinist. A born iconoclast, he began his career by attacking established political orders and ended it by defending one of the world's most blatant tyrannies. Tuck opens this analytical biography with an account of Radek's atypical early adolescence and then traces the evolution of Radek's political thought from Polish nationalism to patriotic and later international socialism. Radek's six years in Germany were marked by his journalistic success and subsequent disgrace as well as his expulsion from the German and Polish social-democratic parties. His fortunes turned when he joined Lenin in Switzerland, and thereafter he established himself as one of the leading rightists in the Communist movement. His romantic liaison with Larissa Reissner, his allegiance to Trotsky and later to Stalin, and his downfall following the publication of his satire on Stalin are treated in subsequent chapters. The work then presents an account of Radek's trial and banishment to the Gulag and an analysis of Radek's ultimate fate. It concludes with an overall assessment that challenges Arthur Koestler's evaluation of the man.
Karl Radek (1885-1939) (L’Europe et les Europes (19e et 20e siècles)) (French Edition)
Né en 1885 en Galicie autrichienne, mort en déportation en 1939 dans des circonstances encore non élucidées, Karl Radek fut l’enfant terrible de l’Internationale socialiste, puis une figure proéminente de l’Internationale communiste, avant de devenir le conseiller personnel de Staline en politique étrangère et de disparaître finalement de la scène politique après une prestation ambiguë d’accusé-accusateur au deuxième Procès de Moscou. Basé sur une documentation largement inédite, provenant des archives ex-soviétiques et de l’ancienne RDA, cet ouvrage est organisé autour de sept problématiques recouvrant les principales étapes de l’itinéraire de cet acteur politique de premier plan, longtemps réduit à l’état de non-personne par la censure stalinienne. A partir d’une définition de l’individu comme tissu social, la biographie de Radek accorde une grande importance à l’histoire des réseaux, des milieux et des lieux de l’engagement révolutionnaire d’une génération emportée par l’étincelle d’Octobre.