Rakovsky was expelled at different times from various countries as a result of his activities, and, during World War I, became a founding member of the Revolutionary Balkan Social Democratic Labor Federation while helping to organize the Zimmerwald Conference.

He came to oppose Joseph Stalin and rallied with the Left Opposition, being marginalized inside the government and sent as Soviet ambassador to London and Paris, where he was involved in renegotiating financial settlements.

[7] He later stated that, as early as his childhood years, he had felt a special admiration towards Russia, and that he had been impressed by witnessing, at age 5, the Russo-Turkish War and Russian presence (he claimed to have met General Eduard Totleben during the conflict).

[17] Rakovsky subsequently rejoined his wife in Saint Petersburg, where he hoped to settle down and engage in revolutionary activities (he was probably expelled after an initial attempt to enter the country, but was allowed to return).

[17] An adversary of Peter Berngardovich Struve after the latter moved towards market liberalism,[7] he became acquainted with, among others, Nikolay Mikhaylovsky and Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, while authoring articles for Nashe Slovo and helping distribute Iskra.

[16] The Balkans correspondent for L'Humanité,[3] he was also personally responsible for reviving România Muncitoare, the defunct journal of the Romanian socialist group, provoking successful strike actions which brought him to the attention of officials.

[7] His head was injured during street clashes with police forces over the Potemkin issue;[24] while recovering, Rakovsky befriended the Romanian poets Ștefan Octavian Iosif and Dimitrie Anghel, who were publishing works under a common signature—one of the two authored a sympathetic portrait of the socialist leader, based on his recollections from the early 1900s.

[25] Throughout these years, Rakovsky, was, according to Iosif and Anghel, "continuously bustling; disappearing and appearing in workers' centers, be it in Brăila, be it in Galaţi, be it in Iaşi, be it anywhere, always preaching with the same undaunted fervor and fanatical conviction his social credo".

[9] Supportive of the thesis according to which the peasantry had revolutionary importance inside Romanian society and Eastern Europe at large, Rakovsky publicized his perspective in the socialist press (writing articles on the subject for România Muncitoare, L'Humanité, Avanti!, Vorwärts and others).

[2] Caragiale authored his own virulent critique of the Romanian state and its handling of the revolt, an essay titled 1907, din primăvară până în toamnă ("1907, From Spring to Autumn"), which, in its final version, adopted some of Rakovsky's suggestions.

[7] The action itself caused protests from leftist politicians and sympathizers,[32] including, among others, the influential Marxist thinker Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea (whose appeal in favor of Rakovsky was described by Iosif and Anghel as evidence of "an almost parental love").

[37] The event, which was attributed by Rakovsky to support for his return[7] and by other sources to government manipulation,[38] caused a clampdown on România Muncitoare (among those socialists arrested and interrogated were Gheorghe Cristescu, I. C. Frimu, and Dumitru Marinescu).

[7] Ultimately, the new Petre P. Carp Conservative cabinet agreed to allow his return to Romania, following pressures from the French Premier Georges Clemenceau (who answered an appeal by Jean Jaurès).

[48] In July, after convening the Bucharest Conference, he and Vasil Kolarov established the Revolutionary Balkan Social Democratic Labor Federation (comprising the left-leaning socialist parties of Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece), and Rakovsky was elected first secretary of its Central Bureau.

[19] After Romania's entry into the conflict on the side of the Entente in August 1916, having failed to attend the Kienthal Conference due to the closure of borders,[55] he was placed under surveillance and ultimately imprisoned in September, based on the belief that he was acting as a German spy.

[45] His anti-war activism almost got him arrested; Rakovsky managed to flee in August, and was present in Stockholm for the Third Zimmerwald Conference; he remained there and, with Karl Radek, issued propaganda material in support of the Russian revolutionaries.

Eventually, Lenin decided in favor of a unified project, and called on Bujor and Rakovsky to form a single leadership (which also included the Romanian expatriates Alecu Constantinescu and Ion Dic Dicescu).

[63] According to American politologist Jerry F. Hough, his appointment and policies were evidence of Russification, a program requested by Lenin himself; Rakovsky's view contrasted with that supported by Stalin, who, at the time, was calling for increased Ukrainianization.

[63] Attacks on them caused problems with the Russian Party; as Lenin himself sided with Rakovsky, a delegation comprising Trotsky, Lev Kamenev and Adolph Joffe left for Kyiv to discuss the matter with local leaders.

Journalist Victor Frunză claims this move had been prompted by a supposed similar verdict given by a Soviet Court to Ion Inculeţ (who had led the Moldavian Democratic Republic's Legislative Assembly that voted union with Romania).

[43] In 1924, as the Labour Party minority cabinet came to power, Ramsay MacDonald and Rakovsky negotiated de jure recognition and agreed on a possible future Anglo-Soviet treaty and a British loan for the Soviet Union.

[78] According to the American magazine Time, Rakovsky also played a hand in motivating Stalin's decision to marginalize Comintern leader Zinoviev, by complaining that the latter's foreign policy was needlessly radical.

He did not take hold of his office until 50 days after his official appointment, refusing to be received at the Élysée Palace by French President Gaston Doumergue for as long as the state authorities would not allow The Internationale (a revolutionary song which was at the time the Soviet national anthem) to be played on the occasion.

[83] He became acquainted with the former French Communist Party member and anti-Stalinist journalist Boris Souvarine, as well as with the Romanian writer Panait Istrati, who had observed Rakovsky's career ever since his presence in Romania.

[89] With Nikolai Krestinsky (who split with the group soon afterwards) and Kamenev, he attempted to organize a substantial opposition, visiting Ukraine for this purpose, hosting public meetings and printing manifestos addressed to the workers in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia (he was assisted by, among others, Yuri Kotsubinsky).

[94] Most of his writings were confiscated by the State Political Directorate, but the letter on Soviet "bureaucratism" he addressed to Nikolai Valentinov survived, and became notorious as a critique of Stalinism (under the title "Professional Dangers" of Power).

[90] Answering Trotsky's request, the French mathematician and Trotskyist Jean Van Heijenoort, together with his fellow activist Pierre Frank, unsuccessfully called on the influential Soviet author Maxim Gorky to intervene in favor of Christian Rakovsky, and boarded the ship he was traveling on near Istanbul.

Researcher Tova Yedlin proposed that the problem was caused by Gorky's distress over having recently separated from his mistress Moura Budberg, as well as to the writer's close surveillance by OGPU agents.

[100] Cited in allegations involving the killing of Sergey Kirov, Rakovsky was arrested in autumn 1937, during the Great Purge;[90] according to Trotsky, he was forced to wait without food or rest for 18 hours, during which time his house was being searched.

After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union (Operation Barbarossa), Rakovsky was shot on Stalin's orders outside Oryol[90] — along with Olga Kameneva, Maria Spiridonova, and over 150 other political prisoners in the Medvedev Forest massacre.