RADEK, KARL ), Russian politician, was born in Lvov (Austrian Poland) and educated at the universities of Cracow and Berne. In 1904 he became a member of the social democratic party of Poland and Lithuania. During the revolution of 1905 he spent a year in prison, and subsequently became a member of the editorial staff of social democratic newspapers in Poland, Leipzig and Bremen which supported the left wing of the German social democrats. During the World War, after some months of illegal anti-militarist activity in Germany, he estab lished himself in Switzerland where he wrote for the Berne Tage blatt. He took part in the Zimmerwald and Kienthal internation alist conferences in Sept. 1915 and April 1916. After the Russian revolution of March 1917 he crossed Germany, together with Lenin, Zinoviev, Martov and others, and remained in Stockholm as the representative of the central committee of the Bolshevik party, issuing a weekly bulletin on the Russian revolution in French and German. After the second revolution, in Nov. 1917, he took part in the Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations. When the German revolution broke out in 1918 he made his way illegally to Germany, where as a representative of the central committee of the Russian Communist party he took a very active part in reorganizing the German Communist party, working in its central committee after the murders of Karl Liebkneckt and Rosa Luxem burg on Jan. 16, 1919. He was imprisoned in Germany from Feb.
to Dec. 1919.
On his release from prison Radek returned to Russia, where he became one of the leading members of the praesidium of the Communist International. He returned illegally to Germany, how ever, and took part in the organization of the joint congress of German Communists and Left Independents. As delegate of the Russian trades unions he attended the international conference of trades unions concerned with questions of the war. He was made a scapegoat for the failure of the German Communists to seize power in the autumn of 1923, and, on account of his support of the "Right" groups of the German Communists, he lost his authority in the Communist International, losing his place in its executive committee and in the central committee of the Russian Communist party. He was a most prolific writer in the Russian press on various questions of international politics. Expelled from the Communist Party in 1927, he was re-admitted in 193o. But in Jan. 1937 he was tried with 16 others for plotting against the Soviet Union and was sentenced to Io years' imprisonment.