Karl Radek - Germany and 'The Radek Affair'

Germany and 'The Radek Affair'

In 1907, after being arrested in Poland and escaping, Radek moved to Leipzig, Germany and joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany(SPD) working on the Party's Leipziger Volkszeitung. He moved to Bremen, where he worked for Bremer Bürgerzeitung, in 1911 and was one of several who attacked Karl Kautsky's analysis of imperialism in Die Neue Zeit in May 1912.

In 1912, he was invited by August Thalheimer to go to Göppingen to temporarily replace him in control of the local party newspaper Freie Volkszeitung which was in financial difficulties. Radek accused the local party leadership in Württemberg of assisting the revisionists to strangle the newspaper due to the papers hostility to them.

At the same time, Radek had supported the Warsaw opposition to the leadership of the SDKPiL (around Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches), and was expelled on charges of having formerly stolen clothes, books and money from party members. Radek's expulsion was noted at the 1913 SPD Congress, which then went on to decide in principal that no-one who had been expelled from a sister party could join another party within the Second International and retrospectively applied this rule to Radek. This move was opposed by Anton Pannekoek and Karl Leibknecht within the SPD and by others in the International such as Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin, some of whom participated in the 'Paris Commission' set up by the International.