Irish War of Independence they would maintain their organisation until Home Rule had been granted. Within this Volunteer movement, another faction, led by the separatist Irish Republican Brotherhood, began to prepare for a revolt against British rule in Ireland. The plan for revolt was realised in the Easter Rising of 1916, in which the Volunteers launched an insurrection whose aim was to end British rule. The insurgents issued the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, proclaiming Ireland's independence as a republic. The Rising, in which over four hundred people died, was almost exclusively confined to Dublin and was put down within a week, but the
Karl Radek Left, with which he had close links from his time in Germany, introducing him to Paul Levi at this time. He took part in the Zimmerwald Conference in 1915, siding with the left. During World War One, Radek engaged in polemics with Vladimir Lenin over the subject of the Irish Easter Rising of 1916; while Lenin was strongly enthusiastic about the Rising, seeing it as a blow to English imperialism, Radek disagreed. Basing his view on Theodore Rothstein (a Jewish emigre from the Russian Empire, living in London), he claimed that, what he called the "Sinn Féin movement" was petit-bourgeois