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Karl Radek, (born 1885, Lemberg, Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now Lviv, Ukraine]—died 1939?), communist propagandist and early leader of the Communist International (Comintern) who fell victim to Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s.

Biography. Member of the R.S.D.L.P. since its beginning, where he was active in Galicia, Russian Poland and Germany. Took an anti-war stand during WWI. Became a Bolshevik in 1917. In 1923 a member of the Left Opposition; expelled from the party in 1927 as a result. Radek re-entered the party in 1930, but was again expelled in 1936.

Karl Radek: The confusion of styles? Pierre Broué [John Archer] The German Revolution, 1917-1923 (1971/2005). Karl Radek was a unique character in the history of the Communist movement, and is a key figure for anyone wishing to study the first years of the Communist International.

The Russian Communist leader and publicist Karl Bernardovich Radek (1885-1939) is best known for his brilliant and acerbic polemics. He was an out standing apostle of internationalism. Karl Radek was born Karl Sobelsohn in Lvov (then in Austrian Poland) to an Austrophile Jewish family.

Along with other recent books such as Mao Zedong Thought by Wang Fanxi, Karl Radek on China provides us with important documents on how the left-opposition approached the Chinese Revolution. The book has a helpful introduction by its editor Alexander Pantsov, a scholar who is well known for his book The Bolsheviks and the Chinese Revolution .