A general strike was called in Hamburg on 21 March 1921 and Bästlein went to the demonstration on the wharfs against Blohm + Voss. There were fights with the police and after the demonstration, Bästlein found himself wanted by the police on charges of "conspiracy to commit high treason. Bästlein fled to Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and worked as an editor, lecturer and teacher at the KPD school in Moscow, where his wife joined him. The two were able to take part in the IV World Congress of the Communist International in December 1922. An amnesty in Germany led to the couple's return in January 1923. Their first child was born in 1924 but died shortly after birth. From 1923 to 1930, Bästlein worked as an editor at several KPD newspapers in Dortmund, Hagen, Wuppertal, Remscheid and Solingen. He was forced to appear in court several times for "press offenses" and once on a charge of high treason, but having learned in the interim about law regarding political offenses, he chose to defend himself, which he did successfully. In 1929, he was editor-in-chief of the Bergische Arbeiterstimme in Solingen and he became the KPD deputy district leader in Düsseldorf. In 1930, he became the district leader in Cologne. In 1930, Bästlein received only a small stipend, so small that he and his wife had to sublet from members of the party. The following year, in February 1931, Bästlein became the Political Secretary of the middle Rhine district of the KPD and for the first time received enough salary to live on. In 1932, Bästlein became a member of the Prussian Federal State Parliament and his second child was born, a son. After 1933 Bernhard Bästlein was elected to the Reichstag on 5 March 1933, but this was the election that brought the Nazis to greater power in the government and he was never able to fulfill his duties. After Hitler had consolidated power, the Nazis began to round up their opponents. Bästlein was arrested in May and charged with "conspiracy to commit high treason". He was sentenced at the Volksgerichtshof to 20 months at hard labor in a Zuchthaus and was sent to Siegburg Prison. Upon release, on 12 February 1935, he returned to his family in Hamburg. On 8 March 1935 he was placed in preventive detention, indicted as the "intellectual author" of a murder in Bonn. Despite the