Karl Radek

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I was wondering what people thought of Karl Radek and if there any recommended bios of him. According the limited reading I've done, he seems to have been an intriguing, if bizarre character

He "screwed up" the German March uprising in 1923. After that he tried to make a weird alliance with the German far right. Back in Russia he was briefly part of the Left Opposition and opposed Stalin, but quickly folded and seems to have become a Stalinist hack.

What was going on with this guy?

[Blake's Baby]

He was a Left Communist for a while, didn't know about the Left Oppositionism, accused of being an adventurer and play-acting revolutionary, apparently Rosa hated him and tried to discredit him before the Russian Revolution, when he was involved with Polish Social Democracy. I say 'apparently' because for all I know it may not be true.

Wasn't he involved with the Hungarian Soviet Republic too?

[Zanthorus]

He was a Left Communist for a while, didn't know about the Left Oppositionism

A lot of early Russian Left-Communists didn't really develop any solid theory and ended up joining the Left Opposition. Although the Left Opposition did develop a faction called the "irreconcilables" who believed that Russia was state-capitalist and that a social revolution was necessary.

[ComradeOm]

An interesting character and noted wit. Radek was, as representative of the ECCI, pretty central to the entire German Revolution and not just 1923. I'm not too informed as to his post-Germany shenanigans but he tends to crop up repeatedly in histories of the Bolsheviks and post-Revolution Russia. Unfortunately he's one of many important 'second-rank' Bolsheviks who have been overshadowed by the party's big names and not given the biographical treatment he deserves