“Comrade Bazhanov, what is the difference between Stalin and Moses? Do not know? Big: Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, and Stalin - from the Politburo."
(Anecdote attributed to Karl Radek.)
As it has already been repeated here more than once, power attracts people with mental pathologies, “with complexes,” as they say now. “Oh, you treat me like that … well, I'll show you! You are my brother … well, I'll arrange for you … You are us … well, I …! " And just one of these people-revolutionaries, who were at the very top of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the USSR, was Karl Berngardovich Radek (moreover, Radek is not a surname, but a pseudonym, the name of one of the popular characters of the then Austrian comic magazines of that time), then what his real name was Karol Sobelson. He was born in 1885 in Austria-Hungary, in a Jewish family in the city of Lemberg (today it is the city of Lvov in Ukraine) and early lost his father, who served at the post office. His mother was a teacher and, apparently, for this reason, being a Jew by birth, he never received a traditional Jewish religious education and even believed that he was a Pole. Then he studied in Tarnau (Tarnow) in Poland, where he graduated from the gymnasium (1902), and as an external student, since he was expelled from it twice for agitation in the working environment. He graduated from the history faculty of the University of Krakow, that's even, so that at that time he could be considered a person more than educated.
Karl Radek
Interestingly, in the same year Radek joined the Polish Socialist Party, in 1903 in the RSDLP, and in 1904 he also became a member of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL). He early developed a talent for journalism, and he began to cooperate with many leftist publications in Poland, as well as Switzerland and Germany, and he also joined the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany) and thus established a very wide circle of acquaintances among the Social Democrats himself. of various kinds. In 1906, in Warsaw, Radek and Rosa Luxemburg fell into the hands of the police, after which he had to serve six months in a Polish prison. Then, in 1907, he was caught again and was exiled from Poland to Austria. In 1908, he quarreled with Rosa Luxemburg, as a result of which he was expelled from the SPD. He continued to educate himself: for example, at the University of Leipzig he attended a course of lectures on the history of China (and why exactly China, I wonder?), Studied also at the seminary of Karl Lamprecht and in Bern.
During the First World War he was in Switzerland, where he met and became close to V. I. Lenin.
In the Russian revolution, Radek happened to play a very important, though not very noticeable at first glance, role. After the events of February 1917, becoming a member of the Foreign Representation of the RSDLP in Stockholm, it was he who negotiated with the relevant organizations that gave permission for Lenin and other Russian revolutionaries to travel through Germany to Russia. So if his actions were unsuccessful, then … much in history could change and go completely wrong. He also organized the publication in the West of a number of propaganda revolutionary publications covering the Russian revolution. And again, after the victory of October, it was he who was appointed to be responsible for the external contacts of the Russian Central Executive Committee, and also included in the delegation of the Council of People's Commissars at the peace talks in Brest-Litovsk.
In 1918 he was sent to Germany to help the revolutionaries there. He could not help them, moreover, he was arrested by the German authorities. However, subsequently, Karl Liebknecht's brother Theodor accused Radek no less of the fact that it was he who betrayed Karl and Rosa Luxemburg to the police and thereby contributed to their death. Whether it was so or not, it will most likely never be possible to find out for sure. However, you cannot erase a word from a song!
Nevertheless, this did not affect his career at all, and in 1920 he became secretary of the Comintern, began to cooperate with central Soviet and party newspapers, such as Pravda and Izvestia, and acquired the fame of a party orator and publicist. Traveled to the Western Front during the war with Poland. He was a member of the Soviet delegation during the peace negotiations with the Poles after the war.
In 1923, Radek made a proposal to organize an armed uprising in Germany, but Stalin did not support his idea. And the fact was that, judging by what he wrote at that time, the idea of the victory of the socialist revolution in a peasant country did not really resonate in the soul of this man. He was very much for this … literate. For example, here is what Radek wrote in his article on the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution:
“… Soviet Russia must welcome this awakening of the peasantry as one of the most important conditions for its final victory. It is clear that the peasantry is not the proletariat, and it is very fun when they want to teach this to us Marxists, gentlemen of the SR, who have built their entire history on a mess of the peasantry and the proletariat. If the proletariat cannot prove to the peasant by deeds that the rule of the proletariat is more profitable for him than the rule of the bourgeoisie, then the proletariat will not retain power. But he would only be able to prove this to the thinking peasantry, the new peasantry, and he would not be able to prove this to the medieval peasantry, to whom nothing could be proved, which could only be a slave. No one has yet considered slavery to be the basis of socialism. " And further: "If we can only live and at least raise the peasant economy, then our bayonet and a piece of bread will shorten the period of torment of the European proletariat, which in turn will help us, a peasant country, not to stop halfway."
Karl Radek in 1925. They say that women liked him very much, they were crazy about him. But how? The teeth stick out like that of a stallion, nose, glasses, face like a wedge … Indeed, it is said that in order to please a woman, a man can only be a little more attractive than a monkey. However, maybe he and women were appropriate …
That is, "if" and again "if", and then - we will help, but they will help us, we are a "peasant country", because how the psychology of the peasant needs to be changed, and this is a very complicated matter (he does not write about this here, but he has it, - author's note). So it is not surprising that already in 1923 Radek was considered an active supporter of Trotsky. At that time, he even became the rector of the Sun Yat-sen University of China Workers - we had such an educational institution in Moscow that trained personnel for the "world revolution", edited the first TSB and even had an apartment in the Kremlin.
However, in the end he paid for his "Trotskyism": in 1927 he was expelled from the ranks of the CPSU (b), and a Special Conference under the OGPU sentenced him to four years of exile, after which Radek was exiled to Krasnoyarsk. Seriously damaged his reputation and his involvement in the denunciation of the notorious super agent Yakov Blumkin, who was arrested after him and soon shot.
At that time, the very fact that a certain enemy came to you meant that you, too, were an enemy and a spy. True, "spy mania" had not yet reached the level of 1937. But the labels "Trotskyist", oppositionist, "deviator" were already in full use. And Radek understood that he needed to dissociate himself from past "mistakes" at any cost. Conceived - done, and in 1930 Radek, as well as E. A. Preobrazhensky, A. G. Beloborodov and I. T. with Trotskyism ". This was followed by numerous "repentances" in the press. So that everyone can see that, beating himself in the chest, the person "realized". And it worked! How is it with Griboyedov? "Whose neck bent more often …" So it was this time. In the party, he was reinstated in the same year, immediately after repentance, he received an apartment in the Government House. He wrote the newspaper "Izvestia", articles, then published a book under the memorable title "Portraits and Pamphlets". And everywhere, both in print and orally, he praised Comrade Stalin. This, by the way, refers to the issue of "collegiality" in the Soviet leadership of those years, in which, as in the "holy advent", some readers of VO believe. If it was, why did he not praise the Politburo? And "the pike nose smells tina", so he praised the one who really made all the decisions, hoping that his "loyalty" would be credited to him.
But … for a short time he regained his well-being. Already in 1936, a new expulsion from the CPSU (b) followed, and then on September 16 of the same year he was arrested. Then he became the main accused at the Second Moscow Trial in the case of the so-called "Parallel Anti-Soviet Trotskyist Center" and spoke in detail about his "conspiratorial activities." Well, this time too, this frankness of his was "appreciated" and did not begin to shoot.
On January 30, 1937, they were sentenced to only 10 years in prison, although everyone was on death row. But … at this time the Third Moscow Trial was already being prepared, and Radek was needed as a living witness against Bukharin and all the others. After that he was sent to the Verkhneuralsk political isolation ward. Where he was on May 19, 1939 and was killed … by other prisoners. And not easy for prisoners. It would not be interesting at all if some prisoner had stabbed him to death. Radek was destined to die at the hands of the prisoner Trotskyist Varezhnikov.
Radek in the 30s
However, when, in 1956-1961, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the KGB of the USSR investigated all the circumstances of Karl Radek's death, former NKVD officers Fedotov and Matusov showed that this murder, on the direct orders of Beria and Kabulov, was organized by the senior operative of the NKVD P. N. Kubatkin, who brought to the political isolation ward a certain I. I. Stepanov, a former commandant of the NKVD of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, who had been convicted of service. He provoked a fight with Radek and killed him, for which he was released in November 1939, and Kubatkin became the head of the UNKVD of the Moscow region.
Well, already in 1988 Karl Radek was posthumously rehabilitated and reinstated in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. As it turned out, he did not commit any criminal acts.
As for the personal qualities and morality of this person, then the revolutionary Angelica Balabanova remarkably told about them in her book “My life is a struggle. Memoirs of a Russian Socialist 1897-1938 ". In her opinion, Radek could be called "an extraordinary mixture of immorality and cynicism." He did not have the slightest idea of moral values and could change his point of view so quickly that at times he contradicted himself. At the same time, he possessed a sharp mind, caustic humor and great versatility, which, of course, was the key to his success as a journalist. Lenin, according to her, never took him seriously and did not treat him as a reliable person. It is interesting that in the USSR he was allowed a certain "freedom of speech", that is, he could write things that in some way ran counter to the official guidelines of Lenin, Trotsky or Chicherin. It was kind of like "trial balloons" to see the reaction of diplomats and the public in Europe. If she was positive, then everything was fine. If unfavorable, then they were officially renounced. Moreover, Radek himself did it … That's even how! Anything to survive!
He also loved to invent and tell jokes, and to those people who did not want to maintain a relationship with him and did not even say hello. It is interesting that, being a Jew, he preferred jokes about Jews, moreover, as a rule, he invented such jokes in which they were presented to them in a funny and openly humiliating manner …
Moreover, Radek again composed a significant part of both Soviet and anti-Soviet anecdotes. For example, here are two of his anecdotes about the dominance of Jews in the country's leadership. The first is: “Two Jews in Moscow are reading newspapers. One of them says to the other: “Abram Osipovich, some Bryukhanov has been appointed as People's Commissar for Finance. What's his real name? " Abram Osipovich replies: "So this is his real name - Bryukhanov." "How! - exclaims the first. Is the real name of Bryukhanov? So he is Russian? " - "Well, yes, Russian." “Oh, listen,” says the first Jew, “what an amazing nation these Russians are: they will crawl through everywhere.” The second is used as an epigraph, and it is also very indicative: "Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, and Stalin - from the Politburo."
They also dealt with all of Radek's closest relatives. The wife was sent to the camp, where she died. The daughter ran through the links and camps. Her husband was shot in 1938. That is, the whole family, except perhaps the daughter, who bore a different surname, was actually cut out at the root …
