Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (/buːˈxɑːrɪn/;[1] Russian:Николай Иванович Бухарин,IPA:[nʲɪkɐˈlajɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑbʊˈxarʲɪn]; 9 October [O.S. 27 September] 1888 – 15 March 1938) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, andMarxist theorist. A prominentBolshevik described byVladimir Lenin as a "most valuable and major theorist" of theCommunist Party, Bukharin was active in the Soviet government from 1917 until his purge in 1937.
Bukharin was initially a proponent ofwar communism, but in 1921 supported the introduction of theNew Economic Policy (NEP) and became its chief theorist and advocate, supporting the party leadership against Trotsky and theLeft Opposition. By late 1924, this stance had positioned Bukharin favourably asJoseph Stalin's chief ally, with Bukharin soon elaborating Stalin's theory of "socialism in one country". From 1926 to 1929, Bukharin served as General Secretary of theComintern's executive committee. Following Stalin's decision to proceed withagricultural collectivisation in theGreat Break, Bukharin was labelled as the leader of theRight Opposition and was removed fromPravda, the Comintern, and the party leadership in 1929.
After a period in lower positions, in 1934 Bukharin was reelected to theCentral Committee and became editor of the newspaperIzvestia. He was a principal architect of the1936 Soviet Constitution. During theGreat Purge, Bukharin was accused of treason in February 1937 and executed after ashow trial in 1938.
Nikolai Bukharin was born on 27 September (9 October, new style), 1888, inMoscow.[2] He was the second son of two schoolteachers, Ivan Gavrilovich Bukharin and Liubov Ivanovna Bukharina.[2] According to Nikolai his father did not believe in God and, from the age of four, often asked him to recite poetry for family friends.[3] His childhood is vividly recounted in his mostly autobiographic novelHow It All Began.
By age twenty, he was a member of the Moscow Committee of the party. The committee was widely infiltrated by theTsarist secret police, theOkhrana. As one of its leaders, Bukharin quickly became a person of interest to them. During this time, he became closely associated withValerian Obolensky andVladimir Smirnov. He also met his future first wife, Nadezhda Mikhailovna Lukina, his cousin and the sister ofNikolai Lukin, who was also a member of the party. They married in 1911, soon after returning from internal exile.
In October 1916, while based in New York City, Bukharin edited the newspaperNovy Mir (New World) withLeon Trotsky andAlexandra Kollontai. When Trotsky arrived in New York in January 1917, Bukharin was the first of the émigrés to greet him. (Trotsky's wife recalled, "with a bear hug and immediately began to tell them about a public library which stayed open late at night and which he proposed to show us at once" dragging the tired Trotskys across town "to admire his great discovery").[5]
At the news of theRussian Revolution of February 1917, exiled revolutionaries from around the world began to flock back to the homeland. Trotsky left New York on 27 March 1917, sailing for St. Petersburg.[6] Bukharin left New York in early April and returned to Russia by way of Japan (where he was temporarily detained by local police), arriving in Moscow in early May 1917.[5] Politically, the Bolsheviks in Moscow were a minority in relation to the Mensheviks and theSocialist Revolutionaries. As more people began to be attracted to Lenin's promise to bring peace by withdrawing from the Great War,[citation needed] membership in the Bolshevik faction began to increase dramatically – from 24,000 members in February 1917 to 200,000 members in October 1917.[7] Upon his return to Moscow, Bukharin resumed his seat on the Moscow City Committee and also became a member of the Moscow Regional Bureau of the party.[8]
To complicate matters further, the Bolsheviks themselves were divided into a right wing and a left wing. The right-wing of the Bolsheviks, includingAleksei Rykov andViktor Nogin, controlled the Moscow Committee, while the younger left-wing Bolsheviks, includingVladimir Smirnov,Valerian Osinsky,Georgii Lomov, Nikolay Yakovlev, Ivan Kizelshtein and Ivan Stukov, were members of the Moscow Regional Bureau.[9] On 10 October 1917, Bukharin was elected to theCentral Committee, along with two other Moscow Bolsheviks:Andrei Bubnov andGrigori Sokolnikov.[10] This strong representation on the Central Committee was a direct recognition of the Moscow Bureau's increased importance. Whereas the Bolsheviks had previously been a minority in Moscow behind the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, by September 1917 the Bolsheviks were in the majority in Moscow. Furthermore, the Moscow Regional Bureau was formally responsible for the party organizations in each of the thirteen central provinces around Moscow – which accounted for 37% of the whole population of Russia and 20% of the Bolshevik membership.[9]
While no one dominated revolutionary politics in Moscow during theOctober Revolution as Trotsky did in St. Petersburg, Bukharin certainly was the most prominent leader in Moscow.[11] During the October Revolution, Bukharin drafted, introduced, and defended the revolutionary decrees of the Moscow Soviet. Bukharin then represented the Moscow Soviet in their report to the revolutionary government in Petrograd.[12] Following the October Revolution, Bukharin became the editor of the party's newspaper,Pravda.[13]
Bukharin believed passionately in the promise ofworld revolution. In the Russian turmoil near the end ofWorld War I, when a negotiated peace with theCentral Powers was looming, he demanded a continuance of the war, fully expecting to incite all the foreign proletarian classes to arms.[14] Even as he was uncompromising toward Russia's battlefield enemies, he also rejected any fraternization with the capitalistAllied powers: he reportedly wept when he learned of official negotiations for assistance.[14]Bukharin emerged as the leader of theLeft Communists in bitter opposition to Lenin's decision to sign theTreaty of Brest-Litovsk.[15] In this wartime power struggle, Lenin's arrest had been seriously discussed by them andLeft Socialist Revolutionaries in 1918. Bukharin revealed this in a Pravda article in 1924 and stated that it had been "a period when the party stood a hair from a split, and the whole country a hair from ruin".[16]
After the ratification of the treaty, Bukharin resumed his responsibilities within the party. In March 1919, he became a member of the Comintern's executive committee and a candidate member of thePolitburo. During theCivil War period, he published several theoretical economic works, including the popular primerThe ABC of Communism (withYevgeni Preobrazhensky, 1919), and the more academicEconomics of the Transitional Period (1920) andHistorical Materialism (1921).
By 1921, he changed his position and accepted Lenin's emphasis on the survival and strengthening of the Soviet state as the bastion of the future world revolution. He became the foremost supporter of theNew Economic Policy (NEP), to which he was to tie his political fortunes. Considered by the Left Communists as a retreat from socialist policies, the NEP reintroduced money and allowed private ownership and capitalistic practices in agriculture, retail trade, and light industry while the state retained control of heavy industry.
AfterLenin's death in 1924, Bukharin became a full member of the Politburo.[16] In the subsequent power struggle among Leon Trotsky,Grigory Zinoviev,Lev Kamenev and Stalin, Bukharin allied himself with Stalin, who positioned himself as centrist of the Party and supported the NEP against theLeft Opposition, which wanted more rapid industrialization, escalation ofclass struggle against thekulaks (wealthier peasants), and agitation for world revolution. It was Bukharin who formulated the thesis of "Socialism in One Country" put forth by Stalin in 1924, which argued thatsocialism (in Marxist–Leninist theory, the period of transition to communism) could be developed in a single country, even one as underdeveloped as Russia. This new theory stated that socialist gains could be consolidated in a single country, without that country relying on simultaneous successful revolutions across the world. The thesis would become a hallmark ofStalinism.
He is an unprincipled intriguer, who subordinates everything to the preservation of his own power. He changes his theory according to whom he needs to get rid of.
Bukharin on Stalin's theoretical position, 1928.[17]
Trotsky, the prime force behind the Left Opposition, was defeated by a triumvirate formed by Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, with the support of Bukharin. At theFourteenth Party Congress in December 1925, Stalin openly attacked Kamenev and Zinoviev, revealing that they had asked for his aid in expelling Trotsky from the Party. By 1926, the Stalin-Bukharin alliance ousted Zinoviev and Kamenev from the Party leadership, and Bukharin enjoyed the highest degree of power during the 1926–1928 period.[18] He emerged as the leader of the Party'sright wing, which included two other Politburo members (Alexei Rykov, Lenin's successor asChairman of theCouncil of People's Commissars andMikhail Tomsky, head of trade unions) and he became General Secretary of theComintern's executive committee in 1926.[19] However, prompted by a grain shortage in 1928, Stalin reversed himself and proposed a program of rapid industrialization and forcedcollectivization because he believed that the NEP was not working fast enough. Stalin felt that in the new situation the policies of his former foes—Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev—were the right ones.[20]
Nikolai Bukharin at the Congress of educators in 1925
Bukharin was worried by the prospect of Stalin's plan, which he feared would lead to "military-feudal exploitation" of the peasantry. Bukharin did want the Soviet Union to achieve industrialization but he preferred the more moderate approach of offering the peasants the opportunity to become prosperous, which would lead to greater grain production for sale abroad. Bukharin pressed his views throughout 1928 in meetings of the Politburo and at the Communist Party Congress, insisting that enforced grain requisition would be counterproductive, as War Communism had been a decade earlier.[21]
Bukharin's support for the continuation of the NEP was not popular with higher Party cadres, and his slogan to peasants, "Enrich yourselves!" and proposal to achieve socialism "at snail's pace" left him vulnerable to attacks first by Zinoviev and later by Stalin. Stalin attacked Bukharin's views, portraying them as capitalist deviations and declaring that the revolution would be at risk without a strong policy that encouraged rapid industrialization.
Having helped Stalin achieve unchecked power against the Left Opposition, Bukharin found himself easily outmaneuvered by Stalin. Yet Bukharin played to Stalin's strength by maintaining the appearance of unity within the Party leadership. Meanwhile, Stalin used his control of the Party machine to replace Bukharin's supporters in the Rightist power base in Moscow, trade unions, and the Comintern.
Nikolai Bukharin at the meeting of the workers and peasants news reporters in Moscow, June 1926
Bukharin attempted to gain support from earlier foes including Kamenev and Zinoviev who had fallen from power and held mid-level positions within the Communist party. The details of his meeting with Kamenev, to whom he confided that Stalin was "Genghis Khan" and changed policies to get rid of rivals, were leaked by the Trotskyist press and subjected him to accusations of factionalism.Jules Humbert-Droz, a former ally and friend of Bukharin,[16] wrote that in spring 1929, Bukharin told him that he had made contact with the “Zinoviev-Kamenev faction”, and that they were planning to useindividual terror (assassination) to get rid of Stalin.[22] Eventually, Bukharin lost his position in the Comintern and the editorship ofPravda in April 1929, and he was expelled from the Politburo on 17 November of that year.[23]
Bukharin was forced to renounce his views under pressure. He wrote letters to Stalin pleading for forgiveness and rehabilitation, but through wiretaps of Bukharin's private conversations with Stalin's enemies, Stalin knew Bukharin's repentance was insincere.[24]
International supporters of Bukharin,Jay Lovestone of theCommunist Party USA among them, were also expelled from the Comintern. They formed an international alliance to promote their views, calling it theInternational Communist Opposition, though it became better known as theRight Opposition, after a term used by the Trotskyist Left Opposition in the Soviet Union to refer to Bukharin and his supporters there.
Even after his fall, Bukharin still did some important work for the Party. For example, he helped write the1936 Soviet constitution, which he believed would guarantee real democratization. There is some evidence that Bukharin was thinking of evolution toward some kind of two-party or at least two-slate elections.[20]Boris Nikolaevsky reported that Bukharin said: "A second party is necessary. If there is only one electoral list, without opposition, that's equivalent to Nazism."[25]Grigory Tokaev, a Soviet defector and admirer of Bukharin, reported that: "Stalin aimed at one party dictatorship and complete centralisation. Bukharin envisaged several parties and even nationalist parties, and stood for the maximum of decentralisation."[26]
Friendship with Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pasternak
In the brief period of thaw in 1934–1936, Bukharin was politically rehabilitated and was made editor ofIzvestia in 1934. There, he consistently highlighted the dangers of fascist regimes in Europe and the need for "proletarian humanism". One of his first decisions as editor was to inviteBoris Pasternak to contribute to the newspaper and sit in on editorial meetings. Pasternak described Bukharin as "a wonderful, historically extraordinary man, but fate has not been kind to him".[27] They first met during the lying-in-state of the Soviet police chief,Vyacheslav Menzhinsky in May 1934, when Pasternak was seeking help for his fellow poet,Osip Mandelstam, who had been arrested – though at that time neither Pasternak nor Bukharin knew why.
Old Bolsheviks: Nikolai Bukharin, the editor of Pravda and Projector.Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov, the First People's Commissar (Minister) for Finance.Lev Karakhan, Deputy People's Commissar (Deputy Minister) for Foreign Affairs, the first Soviet Ambassador to China
Bukharin had acted as Mandelstam's political protector since 1922. According to Mandelstam's wife, Nadezhda, "M. owed him all the pleasant things in his life. His 1928 volume of poetry would never have come out without the active intervention of Bukharin. The journey toArmenia, our apartment and ration cards, contracts for future volumes – all this was arranged by Bukharin."[28] Bukharin wrote to Stalin, pleading clemency for Mandelstam, and appealed personally to the head of theNKVD,Genrikh Yagoda. It was Yagoda who told him about Mandelstam'sStalin Epigram, after which he refused to have any further contact with Nadezhda Mandelstam, who had lied to him by denying that her husband had written "anything rash"[29] – but continued to befriend Pasternak.
Soon after Mandelstam's arrest, Bukharin was delegated to prepare the official report on poetry for the First Soviet Writers' Congress, in August 1934. He could not any longer risk mentioning Mandelstam in his speech to the congress, but did devote a large section of his speech to Pasternak, whom he described as "remote from current affairs ... a singer of the old intelligensia ... delicate and subtle ... a wounded and easily vulnerable soul. He is the embodiment of chaste but self-absorbed laboratory craftsmanship".[30] His speech was greeted with wild applause, though it greatly offended some of the listeners, such as the communist poetSemyon Kirsanov, who complained: "according to Bukharin, all the poets who have used their verses to participate in political life are out of date, but the others are not out of date, the so-called pure (and not so pure) lyric poets".[31]
When Bukharin was arrested two years later, Boris Pasternak displayed extraordinary courage by having a letter delivered to Bukharin's wife saying that he was convinced of his innocence.[32]
Stalin's collectivization policy proved to be as disastrous as Bukharin predicted, but Stalin had by then achieved unchallenged authority in the party leadership. However, there were signs that moderates among Stalin's supporters sought to end official terror and bring a general change in policy, after mass collectivization was largely completed and the worst was over. Although Bukharin had not challenged Stalin since 1929, his former supporters, includingMartemyan Ryutin, drafted and clandestinely circulated an anti-Stalin platform, which called Stalin the "evil genius of the Russian Revolution".
However,Sergey Kirov, First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee was assassinated in Leningrad in December 1934, and his death was used by Stalin as a pretext to launch theGreat Purge, in which about 700,000 people were to perish as Stalin eliminated all past and potential opposition to his authority.[33] Some historians believe that Kirov's assassination in 1934 was arranged by Stalin himself, despite the lack of evidence to plausibly posit such a conclusion.[34] After Kirov's assassination, the NKVD charged an ever-growing group of former oppositionists with Kirov's murder and other acts of treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage.[35]
In February 1936, shortly before the purge started in earnest, Bukharin was sent to Paris by Stalin to negotiate the purchase of the Marx and Engels archives, held by theGerman Social Democratic Party (SPD) before its dissolution by Hitler. He was joined by his young wifeAnna Larina, which therefore opened the possibility of exile, but he decided against it, saying that he could not live outside the Soviet Union.
Bukharin, who had been forced to follow the Party line since 1929, confided to his old friends and former opponents his real view of Stalin and his policy. His conversations withBoris Nicolaevsky, a Menshevik leader who held the manuscripts on behalf of the SPD, formed the basis of "Letter of an Old Bolshevik", which was very influential in contemporary understanding of the period (especially theRyutin Affair and the Kirov murder), although there are doubts about its authenticity.
According to Nicolaevsky, Bukharin spoke of "the mass annihilation of completely defenseless men, with women and children" under forced collectivization and liquidation of kulaks as a class that dehumanized the Party members with "the profound psychological change in those communists who took part in the campaign. Instead of going mad, they accepted terror as a normal administrative method and regarded obedience to all orders from above as a supreme virtue. ... They are no longer human beings. They have truly become the cogs in a terrible machine."[36]
Yet to another Menshevik leader,Fyodor Dan, he confided that Stalin became "the man to whom the Party granted its confidence" and "is a sort of a symbol of the Party" even though he "is not a man, but a devil".[37] In Dan's account, Bukharin's acceptance of the Soviet Union's new direction was thus a result of his utter commitment to Party solidarity.
To his boyhood friend,Ilya Ehrenburg, he expressed the suspicion that the whole trip was a trap set up by Stalin. Indeed, his contacts with Mensheviks during this trip were to feature prominently in his trial.
Bukharin and Rykov, shortly before the trial in 1938.
Stalin was for a long time undecided on Bukharin andGeorgy Pyatakov.[38] After receivingNikolay Yezhov's written evidence denouncing Bukharin, Stalin declined to sanction his arrest. After the trial and execution of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and other leftistOld Bolsheviks in 1936, Bukharin and Rykov were arrested on 27 February 1937 following a plenum of the Central Committee, and were charged with conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state. Photostatic evidence shows that Stalin's first impulse was to simply exile Bukharin, without sending him to trial.[38] In the end, Bukharin was killed, but according to historianAlec Nove, "the road to his demise was not a straight one".[38]
Bukharin was tried in theTrial of the Twenty One on 2–13 March 1938 during theGreat Purge, along with ex-premier Alexei Rykov,Christian Rakovsky,Nikolai Krestinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, and 16 other defendants alleged to belong to the so-called "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites". In a trial meant to be the culmination of previousshow trials, it was alleged that Bukharin and others sought to assassinate Lenin and Stalin from 1918, murderMaxim Gorky by poison, partition the Soviet Union and hand out her territories to Germany, Japan, and Great Britain.
The verdict at the Trial of the Twenty-One.
Even more than earlier Moscow show trials, Bukharin's trial horrified many previously sympathetic observers as they watched allegations levelled against someone who had been so close to Stalin and Lenin. For some prominent Communists such asBertram Wolfe,Jay Lovestone,Arthur Koestler, andHeinrich Brandler, the Bukharin trial marked their final break with Communism and even eventually turned the first three into passionate anti-Communists.[39]
Bukharin wrote letters to Stalin while imprisoned, attempting without success to negotiate his innocence in the case of the alleged crimes, his eventual execution, and his hope for release.
If I'm to receive the death sentence, then I implore you beforehand, I entreat you, by all that you hold dear, not to have me shot. Let me drink poison in my cell instead (let me have morphine so that I can fall asleep and never wake up). For me, this point is extremely important. I don't know what words I should summon up in order to entreat you to grant me this as an act of charity. After all, politically, it won't really matter, and, besides, no one will know a thing about it. But let me spend my last moments as I wish. Have pity on me![40]
In his letter of 10 December 1937, Bukharin suggests becoming Stalin's tool against Trotsky, but there's no evidence Stalin ever seriously considered Bukharin's offer.
If, contrary to expectation, my life is to be spared, I would like to request (though I would first have to discuss it with my wife) the following:
) that I be exiled to America for x number of years. My arguments are: I would myself wage a campaign [in favour] of the trials, I would wage a mortal war against Trotsky, I would win over large segments of the wavering intelligentsia, I would in effect become Anti-Trotsky and would carry out this mission in a big way and, indeed, with much zeal. You could send an expert security officer [chekist] with me and, as added insurance, you could detain my wife here for six months until I have proven that I am really punching Trotsky and Company in the nose, etc.
) But if there is the slightest doubt in your mind, then exile me to a camp in Pechora or Kolyma, even for 25 years. I could set up there the following: a university, a museum of local culture, technical stations and so on, institutes, a painting gallery, an ethnographic museum, a zoological and botanical museum, a camp newspaper and journal.[41]
WhileAnastas Mikoyan andVyacheslav Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured and his letters from prison do not give the suggestion that he was tortured, it is also known that his interrogators were given the order: "beating permitted".[citation needed] Bukharin held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence" wore him down.[42] But when he read his confession amended and corrected personally by Stalin, he withdrew his whole confession. The examination started all over again, with a double team of interrogators.[43][44]
Bukharin's confession and his motivation became subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's acclaimed novelDarkness at Noon and a philosophical essay byMaurice Merleau-Ponty inHumanism and Terror. His confessions were somewhat different from others in that while he pleaded guilty to the "sum total of crimes", he denied knowledge when it came to specific crimes. Some astute observers noted that he would allow only what was in the written confession and refuse to go any further.
There are several interpretations of Bukharin's motivations (besides being coerced) in the trial. Koestler and others viewed it as a true believer's last service to the Party (while preserving the little amount of personal honor left) whereas Bukharin biographer Stephen Cohen and Robert Tucker saw traces ofAesopian language, with which Bukharin sought to turn the tables into an anti-trial of Stalinism (while keeping his part of the bargain to save his family). While his letters to Stalin – he wrote 34 very emotional and desperate letters tearfully protesting his innocence and professing his loyalty – suggest a complete capitulation and acceptance of his role in the trial, it contrasts with his actual conduct in the trial. Bukharin himself speaks of his "peculiar duality of mind" in his last plea, which led to "semi-paralysis of the will" and Hegelian "unhappy consciousness", which likely stemmed not only from his knowledge of the ruinous reality of Stalinism (although of course he could not say so in the trial) but also of the impending threat of fascism.[45]
The result was a curious mix of fulsome confessions (of being a "degenerate fascist" working for the "restoration of capitalism") and subtle criticisms of the trial. After disproving several charges against him (one observer noted that he "proceeded to demolish, or rather showed he could very easily demolish, the whole case"[46]) and saying that "the confession of the accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence" in a trial that was solely based on confessions, he finished his last plea with the words:
... the monstrousness of my crime is immeasurable especially in the new stage of struggle of the U.S.S.R. May this trial be the last severe lesson, and may the great might of the U.S.S.R. become clear to all.[47]
The state prosecutor,Andrey Vyshinsky, characterized Bukharin as an "accursedcrossbreed of fox and pig" who supposedly committed a "whole nightmare of vile crimes".
While in prison, he wrote at least four book-length manuscripts including a lyrical autobiographical novel,How It All Began, a philosophical treatise,Philosophical Arabesques, a collection of poems, andSocialism and Its Culture – all of which were found in Stalin's archive and published in the 1990s.
Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Communist Party and French author and Nobel laureateRomain Rolland, 1935
Among other intercessors, the French author andNobel laureateRomain Rolland wrote to Stalin seeking clemency, arguing that "an intellect like that of Bukharin is a treasure for his country". He compared Bukharin's situation to that of the great chemistAntoine Lavoisier who was guillotined during theFrench Revolution: "We in France, the most ardent revolutionaries ... still profoundly grieve and regret what we did. ... I beg you to show clemency."[48] He had earlier written to Stalin in 1937, "For the sake of Gorky I am asking you for mercy, even if he may be guilty of something", to which Stalin noted: "We must not respond." Bukharin was executed on 15 March 1938 at theKommunarka shooting ground, but the announcement of his death was overshadowed by the NaziAnschluss of Austria.[49]
The act of rehabilitation of Bukharin
According toZhores andRoy Medvedev inThe Unknown Stalin (2006), Bukharin's last message to Stalin stated "Koba, why do you need me to die?", which was written in a note to Stalin just before his execution. "Koba" was Stalin'snom de guerre, and Bukharin's use of it was a sign of how close the two had once been. The note was allegedly found still in Stalin's desk afterhis death in 1953.[50]
Despite the promise to spare his family, Bukharin's wife, Anna Larina, was sent to a labor camp, but she survived to see her husband officiallyrehabilitated by the Soviet state underMikhail Gorbachev in 1988.[51][52][53][54] Their son, Yuri Larin (born 1936), was sent to an orphanage in an attempt to keep him safe from the authorities, and also lived to see his rehabilitation.[55] His first wife, Nadezhda, died in a labor camp after being arrested in 1938. His second wife, Esfir' Gurvich, and their daughter Svetlana Gurvich-Bukharina (born 1924), were arrested in 1949, but survived past 1988, though they had lived in fear of the government their whole lives.[56]
Bukharin delivers the welcome speech at the meeting of Young Communist International, 1925
Bukharin was immensely popular within the party throughout the twenties and thirties, even after his fall from power. In his testament, Lenin portrayed him as the Golden Boy of the party,[57] writing:
Speaking of the young C.C. members, I wish to say a few words about Bukharin and Pyatakov. They are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures (among the youngest ones), and the following must be borne in mind about them: Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favourite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of the dialectics, and, I think, never fully understood it) ... Both of these remarks, of course, are made only for the present, on the assumption that both these outstanding and devoted Party workers fail to find an occasion to enhance their knowledge and amend their one-sidedness.
Bukharin in 1937, shortly after being removed from his post as editor of the government organIzvestia
Bukharin made several notable contributions to Marxist–Leninist thought, most notablyThe Economics of the Transition Period (1920) and his prison writings,Philosophical Arabesques,[58] as well as being a founding member of the Soviet Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a keenbotanist. His primary contributions to economics were his critique ofmarginal utility theory, his analysis of imperialism, and his writings on the transition to communism in the Soviet Union.[59]
Bukharin alongside Trotsky have been viewed by some scholars as representing political alternatives toStalinism.[60] In part, due to their de facto leadership of theRight Opposition andLeft Opposition which was at variance with Stalin. These core differences ranged from areas related to economics, foreign policy and cultural matters.[61][62]
British authorMartin Amis argues that Bukharin was perhaps the only major Bolshevik to acknowledge "moral hesitation" by questioning, even in passing, the violence and sweeping reforms of the early Soviet Union. Amis writes that Bukharin said "during the Civil War he had seen 'things that I would not want even my enemies to see'".[65]
Bukharin was a cartoonist who left many cartoons of contemporary Soviet politicians. The renowned artistKonstantin Yuon once told him: "Forget about politics. There is no future in politics for you. Painting is your real calling."[67] His cartoons are sometimes used to illustrate the biographies of Soviet officials. Russian historian Yury Zhukov stated that Nikolai Bukharin's portraits ofJoseph Stalin were the only ones drawn from the original, not from a photograph.[68]
^Rabinowitch, Alexander (2007).The Bolsheviks in power: the first year of Soviet rule in Petrograd. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 167, 174–175, 194 andpassim.ISBN978-0-253-34943-9. At the crucial meeting of theCEC convened at 3:00 am, on 24 February 1918, few hours before the German ultimatum was due to expire, Bukharin had the courage to break ranks and voted against accepting the treaty, while many other Left Communists either observed party discipline (V. Volodarsky andStanislav Kosior, for instance) or were simply "no shows" (Dzerzhinsky,Kollontai,Uritsky, etc.) (p. 178).
^abcStephen F. Cohen,Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938 (1980)
^McSmith, Andy (2015).Fear and the Muse Kept Watc, the Russian Masters – from Akhmatova and Pasternak to Shostakovich and Eisenstein – Under Stalin. New York: New Press. p. 131.ISBN978-1-59558-056-6.
^Mandelstam, Nadezhda (1971).Hope Against Hope, a Memoir, (translated by Max Hayward). London: Collins & Harvill. p. 113.
^Gorky, Maxim; Karl Radek; Nikolai Bukharin; et al. (1977).Soviet Writers' Congress 1934, the Debate on Socialist Realism and Modernism. London: Lawrence & Wishart. p. 233.
^Medvedev, Roy (1980).Nikolai Bukharin, The Last Years. New York: W. W. Norton. pp. 85–86.ISBN0-393-01357-X.
^Nikolaevsky, Boris,The Kirov Assassination, The New Leader, 23 August 1941.
^Conquest, Robert.Stalin and the Kirov Murder. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 122–138,ISBN0-19-505579-9.
^A. Yakovlev, "O dekabr'skoi tragedii 1934",Pravda, 28 January 1991, p. 3, cited in J. Arch Getty, "The Politics of Repression Revisited", in ed., J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning,Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, New York, 1993, p. 46.
^Nicolaevsky, Boris.Power and the Soviet Elite, New York, 1965, pp. 18–19.
^Zhores A. Medvedev & Roy A. Medvedev, translated by Ellen Dahrendorf,The Unknown Stalin, I.B. Tauris, 2006,ISBN1-85043-980-X, 9781850439806, chapter 14, p. 296.
^Philip ArestisA Biographical Dictionary of Dissenting Economists, p. 88.
^"At the same time, it cannot be denied that things would have gone very differently had Lenin survived or had Trotsky or Bukharin (particularly Bukharin). Stalin’s personality is obviously a central factor to take into account. It is a cruel fact of life that unscrupulousness confers a decided advantages in struggles for power."Sheehan, Helena (23 January 2018).Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History. Verso Books. p. 236.ISBN978-1-78663-428-3.
^"Neither Trotsky nor Bukharin would have pursued anything like Stalin’s pseudo-revolutionary “third period” foreign policy and his connivance in the advent of Hitler, another product of his political manoeuvring against the Bukharinists".Daniels, Robert V. (1 October 2008).The Rise and Fall of Communism in Russia. Yale University Press. p. 396.ISBN978-0-300-13493-3.Archived from the original on 19 February 2024. Retrieved27 May 2024.
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Gregory, Paul R. (2010).Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin's Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press.ISBN978-0-8179-1034-1.
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A. Andreev; D. Tsygankov, eds. (2010).Imperial Moscow University: 1755–1917: encyclopedic dictionary. Moscow: Russian political encyclopedia (ROSSPEN). pp. 108–109.ISBN978-5-8243-1429-8.
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