Volk was born in Schowkwa, Galicia (today Ukraine) to a middle-class Jewish family and grew up in Moravian Prostějov, where he attended gymnasium. He studied economics and philosophy at Charles University in Prague. He was involved with the socialist-zionist Poale Zion and with others in its left wing, joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1921. He then went to Soviet Russia and worked short-term in the soviet diplomatic service as a secretary at the embassy in Beijing and at the Soviet Russian press agency in Vienna. At the end of 1922, Volk moved back to Germany, where under the assumed name of Robert, he worked full-time as a functionary of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). From 1923–1924, he was the political leader of the regional KPD in Lower Saxony and during the Hamburg Uprising, acted as political commissar. After a brief period on the Comintern staff in Moscow, he moved back to Germany in 1924, where he headed the KPD daily newspapers, "Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung" in Leipzig and "Der Kämpfer" in Chemnitz until 1925. In 1926, he became head of the central KPD news service in Berlin.