Table Of ContentKARL RADEK
KARL RADEK
The Last Internationalist
Warren Lerner
Stanford University Press, Stanford, California 1970
Thanks are due for permission to use the following photographs:
to Verlag fur Politik und Wirtschaft, Koln-Marienburg, for
Konrad Haenisch; to Radio Times Hulton Picture Library for
Zinoviev at Baku; to Paul Popper, Ltd. for Stalin in 1919; and
to Bertram D. Wolfe for Stalin and Kirov, Felix Dzierzynski,
and Lenin in 1922.
Stanford University Press, Stanford, California
©1970 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-8047-0722-7 LC 70-97915
To Vera Tansky, who many years ago told me why
there were such men as Karl Radek
Preface
In April 1913, August Bebel, the leader of German socialism, re-
ceived an impassioned message from the editor of the socialist
newspaper in Bremen protesting the impending purge of one of the
party’s most talented young writers, Karl Radek. The editor claimed
that Radek was the victim of a personal vendetta led by party con-
servatives and argued that German socialism could ill afford to lose
a man of Radek’s talents and intelligence. Bebel, who knew the cir-
cumstances that had led to Radek’s plight, replied laconically: “If
only all of Radek’s qualities were as unimpeachable as his intelli-
gence!” Thus he expressed what was to become an almost universal
evaluation of Karl Radek, one of the most gifted and controversial
socialists of his time.
For three decades, Radek functioned as a talented and aggressive
apostle of international socialist revolution. An effective speaker
and an imaginative tactician, he was widely acknowledged as a
propagandist and journalist. A prolific writer in several languages,
he combined knowledge, sarcasm, wit, and ingenuity in a way un-
matched by any other writer of his genre. Yet his publications were
not the contribution he prized most; he would not have wanted to
be remembered as the H. L. Mencken of European socialism. Radek
was an intensely political person, deeply involved in the cause of
international revolution: to him, journalism was but one way to
serve this cause.
viii Preface
Whatever else Radek failed to hold sacred, the realization of an
international socialist revolution remained his constant goal. To a
greater degree than almost any other important figure of the Marx-
ist movement, Radek was vaterlandslos: the cosmopolitan whose
political loyalties could never be defined in terms of nation or na-
tionality. Lacking a national affiliation, he moved easily in and out
of various socialist movements and eventually into the Communist
International, where more than any other Bolshevik he was ac-
cepted as an internationalist to whom the world revolution was as
important as the Russian Revolution. Unfortunately, in the last
decade of his life, ‘"the Stalin decade,” the internationalism that
had been his hallmark seemed buried under the weight of Stalin’s
“socialism in one country.” The years after 1929 formed a sad epi-
logue to his dynamic career as a revolutionary internationalist.
Although no other biography of Karl Radek exists, a number of
Western scholars, for example, E. H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Wer-
ner Angress, Otto Ernst Schiiddekopf, and Richard Lowenthal,
have dealt with him at length in various studies. Radek himself
wrote something for publication almost every day of his adult life,
and most of these writings have survived and are available to schol-
ars. Virtually every person who came into contact with Radek re-
corded some impression of him—often an uncomplimentary one.
Ruth Fischer and Angelica BalabanofiF, for example, pictured
Radek as irresponsible, shameless, and cynical —a detriment rather
than an asset to the international socialist movement. Directly and
indirectly, their accounts have colored many interpretations of
Radek, even those of scholars reluctant to accept a negative evalua-
tion of him.
Unfortunately, there is no substantial body of material available
that reveals the private Radek—letters, diaries, or memoirs. His
personal papers —assuming that there were any—have not sur-
vived, and Soviet and East European authorities have been slow to
make available any archival materials they may have on him. For
over thirty years he has been completely ignored by Soviet his-
torians, a fate he shares with others of his generation, while Polish
Preface ix
and East European historians deal with him only when they cannot
avoid doing so. The biographer —and the reader—must be pre-
pared to accept the limitations imposed by these problems.
Radek’s career spanned an amazing variety of political and na-
tional milieux. To some extent, his history is the history of an era—
of the time when the European socialist Left found itself caught in
events that forced repeated choices between socialist ideals and
national loyalties, between immediate and long-range revolution-
ary goals. This volume does not purport to be a study of the era;
for a detailed coverage of the political movements involved, the
reader will have to turn elsewhere. Nor does this work seek to
present an exegesis of Radek’s writings or to distill from them an
“essential Radek.’’ Instead of offering his readers eternal verities,
Radek usually discussed specific objective conditions that de-
manded explanation or criticism. Unlike Lenin or Trotsky, he was
not a system-builder. Radek’s publications derived their impor-
tance from the context of his political activities; by and large, they
cannot stand divorced from these activities. To invest his works
with a universality that was not there would be a disservice to him
and to history.
Radek made an extraordinary journey through the ranks of the
European Left. His inspiration was the idea of a world revolution
that would change society and thus eliminate the social ills of
modern times. Though his actions were often crass or opportunistic
enough to make one doubt his motives, the goal was always there.
This volume is essentially a chronicle of his journey.
The book began as a doctoral dissertation, prepared at Columbia
University under the guidance of Geroid T. Robinson, Oliver Rad-
key, and Henry Roberts, all of whom gave generously of their time
and advice. The final version, considerably different both in scope
and in content from the dissertation, was read and criticized, in
whole or in part, by Richard Lowenthal, Alexander Erlich, Alexan-
der Dallin, Clifford Foust, and John Curtiss. In my own stubborn-
ness, I may have failed to profit adequately from their helpful sug-
gestions, but I have not lacked good advice.
