 After the suppression of the Council Republic he was apprehended on 14 May in Tyrol and sent back to Munich, where he was accused and sentenced to 15 years in prison.At the end of 1919 he was transferred from Munich to Berlin-Moabit prison, in 1920 put under house arrest, and on 6 June 1920 he was able to leave via Stettin to Petrograd.He became editor of the Bulletin of the Communist International (Comintern) for the Russian press, the party organisation of the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and Cultural propaganda (Narkompros) in the Russian Soviet republic.