Ashley Montagu
British-American anthropologist
Karl Berngardovich Radekwas 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.
Table of Contents
About the Karl Radek
Karl Berngardovich Radekwas 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.
10 Quotes by Karl Radek
- 1.
Without Socialism the working class is a heterogeneous mixture of different categories, some of which have independent, varying interests, sometimes opposed to each other.
Karl RadekRussian revolutionary (1885-1939)
- 2.
In general, if signs of sectarianism do appear in a Socialist Party, these are only the products of the absence of a broad Labour movement in the country.
Karl RadekRussian revolutionary (1885-1939)
- 3.
The enmity of such a party towards Socialism does not mean that the members are only prejudiced against it because they do not know it; it means that they are possessed of bourgeois ideas, and wish to determine their policy accordingly.
Karl RadekRussian revolutionary (1885-1939)
- 4.
A Labour party is not a debating club, it is a party of action.
Karl RadekRussian revolutionary (1885-1939)
- 5.
Thus in such a Labour Party there can be no question of independent policy.
Karl RadekRussian revolutionary (1885-1939)
- 6.
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.
Karl RadekRussian revolutionary (1885-1939)
- 7.
The Social-Democratic Federation took part in all the political and economic struggles of the English working class; it took pains to bring Socialist views home to them, not only through agitation and propaganda, but also by actions.
Karl RadekRussian revolutionary (1885-1939)
- 8.
If a Labour movement, on a bourgeois basis, has hitherto existed in the country where the new movement is awakening it will certainly not disappear all at once.
Karl RadekRussian revolutionary (1885-1939)
- 9.
Life provides material for its agitation which makes its general views comprehensible to the masses.
Karl RadekRussian revolutionary (1885-1939)
- 10.
The mass of workers, as yet non-Socialist, is retarded in its development towards Socialism.
Karl RadekRussian revolutionary (1885-1939)