Radek: A Novel

by Stefan Heym

In this, bestselling author Stefan Heym’s last historical novel, we become intimate with the story of the maverick and internationalist Karl Radek, known as the editor of the newspaper of record throughout the Soviet era, Isvestia. Beginning as Lenin’s companion at the dawning of the October Revolution, Radek later became Stalin’s favorite intellectual – only to find himself entangled in the great purges of the late 1930s and scripting his own trial. Heym reveals Radek as a brilliant Bolshevik journalist and politician whose enormous talent as a writer, political acumen, continuous curiosity carried him through event after event as he found himself at the center of the Communist world.

Radek was such a controversial and perennially ambiguous personality that even his historical biography seems a work of fiction. With his thick glasses and most non-Aryan appearance, he was what the French call beau-laid, and rumors spun around his torrid affair with the famously beautiful Larisa Reisner, a “young woman who flashed across the revolutionary sky like a burning meteor, blinding many.” In the struggles of the revolutionary movement Radek changed sides several times and came into conflict with Stalin, was exiled to Siberia, capitulated and resumed his editorial duties at Isvestia – only to get caught up in the purge trials and sentenced to prison, where he died.

Heym sculpts credible conversations with Lenin, Luxemburg, Liebknecht, Trotsky, Stalin, and many others (all seen from Radek’s perspective), marked by what some might have seen as distinctively Jewish argumentative skills and humor. As we follow him at every turn of the wheel of fate come to know Radek as a man haunted by the fear that the insurgency will cease to move forward, living his life as a frenzied chase in pursuit of the continuation of the revolution, until the very end. Originally published in Munich in 1995, this first-ever English translation of Radek fashions the inner voice of a unique figure in the global revolutionary wave of the first half of the twentieth century.

Genres: Biography, German Literature

614 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read Heym before, but this book, which was among his last (it was originally published in 1995 when he was 82 and he died six years later), is epic in scope. A fictionalized account of a real person, Karol Sobelsohn (aka Karl Radek) and his journey through both the Russian and German Revolutions at the end of WWI, the death of Lenin, and finally through Stalin's show trials in the late 30's. In terms of such a literary account, it could probably only be matched by the early modernist works of Victor Serge.

Apparently Heym was the same kind of interesting character as Radek was, and his close attention to the details of the events themselves, and even better, the close attention to the inner nature of the historical figures he animates, including Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin, yields insight into the history that cannot otherwise be gleaned. It is for this reason I think this top-shelf work, and it cannot be limited to the spectacle of a prominent Bolshevik scripting his own show trial.

[Victor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only Stefan Heym could so faithfully resurrect Radek’s tale in his own voice and do it so convincingly through the medium of a novel. In the hands of most other novelists, even accomplished ones, it would likely have been a total disaster. Heym’s own personal background, historical research, and experience in writing novels with a similar premise (such as his book on Ferdinand Lassalle) give Heym the edge in bringing Radek’s sardonic tone to life.

[e v · Rating 5 out of 5]

“trotsky remained silent. finally, he said, ‘i didn’t bring a cheese sandwich.’”

[Paul Ataua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three men are sitting in a cell in the KGB headquarters. The first asks the second why he has been imprisoned. He replies, "Because I criticized Karl Radek." The first man responds, "But I am here because I spoke out in favor of Radek!" They turn to the third man who has been sitting quietly in the back and ask him why he is in jail. He answers, "I'm Karl Radek." – A Russian Joke.

Radek is the fictionalized history of an actual activist, writer, and confident of Lenin but a man who is true to his own ideals in a world of changing ideas and practical responses to problems. He was at the center of the revolutionary transformation that led to the creation of the Soviet Union and was active until becoming a victim of the great purges in the late thirties. ‘Radek’ the novel is not a wonderful piece of fiction but it is a fascinating insight into the changes that took place in that period. Whatever your take on the Russian revolution, the most puzzling question is probably one of how it could possibly have taken place and following the story makes that mystery even more puzzling. The book really brings out the number of obstacles that were faced. The number of activists who preferred a more parliamentary road to socialism, those who wanted the revolution to wait until the war finished, those who were against a revolution in one country, those supported by powerful nations that did all they could to help a counter revolution, and so on. As said, not a great piece of fiction, but a fascinating read.

[Nils Van Nieuwenhuyse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zeer meeslepend boek. Het verhaal sleept je mee doorheen de belangrijkste gebeurtenissen van begin 20e eeuw, en geeft de gevoelens die revolutionairen toen hadden weer: het optimisme vóór 1914, de verslagenheid tijdens de oorlog en de uitzichtloosheid door het verraad van de sociaal-democratische partijen, waarop dan weer het triomfantelijke gevoel van de Russische revolutie en de nakende wereldrevolutie volgt. Deze blijft echter uit. De verslagenheid die daaruit volgde, samen met de ideologische debatten erna worden ook zeer mooi weergegeven. Er wordt een goed beeld geschetst van de opkomende bureaucratische degeneratie van de Sovjet-Unie onder Stalin. Het boek eindigt tenslotte met het verbannen en ter dood veroordelen van de echte revolutionaire socialisten, die hun hele leven gegeven hadden voor de socialistische zaak: Trotski, Radek, Zinoviev, Bucharin, Kamenev, Piatnikov, ...

Een tragische driehoek uit het boekje 😀

[Susu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stefan Heym schrieb den Roman in seiner Zeit im Bundestag, den er Mitte der 90er als Alterspräsident eröffnete. Der historische Roman folgt Radek, einem unbequemen Denker vom linken Rand der polnischen Sozialdemokraten, durch die deutsche und russische Revolution. Er wird Mitstreiter Lenins, dann Oppositioneller zusammen mit Trotzki und nach den Schauprozessen landet er im Straflager. Ein Rundflug durch die Geschichte der Sozialdemokratie, der Kommunisten, der gegensätzlichen Strömungen und Debatten.

[Connor Douglass · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit lacking as a novel (and probably hornier than it needed to be) but it makes up for it with human-level portraits of events usually only seen from a greater remove (e.g. Brest-Litovsk, the trials of the Old Bolsheviks). A more cynical take on the Soviet Union than I tend to go for, but he was writing just a few years after the collapse of the USSR/GDR, so I get where he is coming from.