Russia / USSR: Karl Radek (1885 – 1939), Marxist revolutionary and secretary of the Comintern, c. 1920s

Karl Berngardovich Radek (31 October 1885 – 19 May 1939) was a Marxist active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before World War I and an international Communist leader in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution.

He helped to write the 1936 Soviet Constitution, but during the Great Purge of the 1930s, he was accused of treason and confessed. He was sentenced to 10 years of penal labor.

He was killed in prison by an NKVD operative under direct orders from Lavrentiy Beria.

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