Nikolai Bukharin

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Nikolai Bukharin Никола́й Буха́рин
Born	Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин (Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin) October 9, 1888(1888-10-09) Moscow, Russian Empire
Died	March 15, 1938 (aged 49) Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
Cause of death	Execution
Nationality	Russian
Education	Moscow University
Known for	Editor of Pravda, Izvestia Author of The ABC of Communism,The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period,Imperialism and World Economy. Principal framer of the Soviet Constitution of 1936
Title	"Golden Boy of the revolution"
Political party	Bolshevik, Communist Party
Religious beliefs	Atheist
Spouse(s)	Anna Larina
Children	Svetlana, Yuri Larin
Parents	Ivan Gavrilovich and Liubov Ivanovna Bukharin

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (Russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин), (October 9 [O.S. September 27] 1888 – March 15, 1938) was a Marxist theoretician, Bolshevik revolutionary, and Soviet politician. He was a member of the Politburo (1924-1929) and Central Committee (1917-1937), chairman of Communist International(Commintern 1926-1929), and the editor in chief of Pravda (1918-1929), journal Bolshevik (1924-1929), and Izvestia (1934-1936), and the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. He authored "Imperialism and World Economy"(1918), "The ABC of Communism"(1919), and "Historical Materialism" (1921) among others.

Contents 1 Before the 1917 Revolution 2 The 1917 Revolution to 1928 3 Power Struggle 4 Fall from Power 5 Great Purge 6 Tightening Noose 7 The Trial 8 Execution 9 Political stature and achievements 10 Cartoonist 11 Notes 12 Further reading 13 External links

[edit] Before the 1917 Revolution

Bukharin was born in Moscow to two primary school teachers. (His childhood is vividly recounted in his mostly autobiographic novel "How It All Began" written shortly before his execution.) His political life began at the age of sixteen when, together with his lifelong friend Ilya Ehrenburg, he participated in student activities at Moscow University related to the Russian Revolution of 1905.

He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906, becoming a member of the Bolshevik faction. With Grigori Sokolnikov, he convened the 1907 national youth conference in Moscow, which was later considered the founding of the Komsomol.

By age 20, he was a member of the Moscow Committee of the party. The committee was heavily infiltrated by the tsarist secret police, or Okhrana. As one of its leaders, Bukharin quickly became a person of interest to them. During this time, he became closely associated with N. Osinskii and Vladimir Smirnov and met his future wife, Nadezhda Mikhailovna Lukina, the sister of Nikolai Lukin. They married soon after his exile.

In 1911, after a brief imprisonment, Bukharin was exiled to Onega in Arkhangelsk, but soon appeared in Hanover, where he stayed for year before visiting Cracow to meet Vladimir Lenin for the first time. During this exile, he continued his education and and wrote several books that established him as a major Bolshevik theorist in his 20's. He developed an interest in the works of non-Marxist economic theorists, such as Aleksandr Bogdanov, who deviated from Leninist positions. While in Vienna in 1913, he helped a Georgian Bolshevik named Joseph Stalin write an article "Marxism and the National Question" at Lenin's request. His work, "Imperialsim and World Economy" during World War I influenced Lenin, who freely borrowed from it in his larger and better known work, Imperialism — The Highest Stage of Capitalism. Nevertheless, he and Lenin often had hot disputes on theoretical issues and Bukharin's closeness with European Left and anti-statist tendencies.

In 1916, he came to New York City, where he edited the newspaper Novy Mir (New World) with Leon Trotsky and Alexandra Kollontai. When Trotsky arrived in New York in Janury 1917, Bukharin was the first to greet him (as 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 Trotskies across town "to admire his great discovery") The future leaders of Bolshevik Left and Right had warm relationship in New York. ^[1]

[edit] The 1917 Revolution to 1928

At the news of Russian Revolution of February 1917, Bukharin returned to Russia by way of Japan and at once became one of leading Bolsheviks in Moscow and was elected to the Central Committee. In October Revolution, he drafted, introduced, and defended the revolutionary decrees of Moscow Soviet, in whose name the insurrection took place. Bukharin then represented the Moscow party in their report to the revolutionary government in Petrograd. ^[2] After the revolution, he became editor of Pravda.

In 1918, he emerged as the leader of Left Communists in bitter opposition to Lenin on signing of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with Germany, urging the Bolsheviks to continue the war effort and turn it into a world-wide push for proletarian revolution. He even contemplated arresting Lenin for 24 hours, which was to form a basis in the future purge trial (where it was transformed into assassination plot).

In March 1919, he became a member of the Comintern's executive committee and a candiate member of Politburo. During the Civil War period, he published several theoretical economic works, including The Economics of the Transitional Period (1920), The "The ABC of Communism" together with Evgenii Preobrazhensky (1921), which became popular primer explaining communism to wide audience, and The Theory of Historical Materialism (1921).

By 1921, he changed his position and accepted Lenin's policies, encouraging the development of the New Economic Policy (NEP), to which he was to tie his political fortunes. While some have criticised Bukharin for this apparent U-turn, his change of emphasis can be partially explained by the necessity for peace and stability following seven years of war in Russia, and the failure of Communist Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, which ended the prospect of worldwide revolution.

[edit] Power Struggle

After Lenin's death in 1924, Bukharin became a full member of the Politburo. In the subsequent power struggle among Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin, Bukharin allied himself with Stalin, who positioned himself as centrist of the Party and supported NEP against Left Opposition. It was Bukharin who formulated the thesis of "Socialism in One Country" put forth by Stalin in 1924, which argued that socialism (in Leninist theory, the transitional stage from capitalism to communism) could be developed in a single country, even one as underdeveloped as Russia. This new theory stated that revolution need no longer be encouraged in the capitalist countries, since Russia could and should achieve socialism alone. The thesis would become a hallmark of Stalinism.

By 1926, Stalin-Bukharin alliance ousted Zinoviev-Kamanev from the Party leadership, and Bukharin enjoyed highest degree of power during 1926-1928 period. He was the leader of the Party's right wing, which included two other Politburo members Alexei Rykov, Lenin's successor as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and Mikhail Tomskii, head of trade union, and he became chairman of Comintern's executive committee in 1926. However, in 1928, Stalin reversed himself and proposed a program of collectivization because he believed that the NEP was not working fast enough to achieve industrialization. Stalin suddenly adopted the policies of his vanquished foes – Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamanev.

Bukharin was worried by the prospect of a collectivization policy, which he feared would lead to “military-feudal exploitation” of the peasantry. He believed that controlling the peasants would make them resentful and, as a result, less productive. 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. This would lead to greater grain production for sale abroad. Bukharin pressed his views throughout 1928 in meetings of the Politburo and at the Party Congress, insisting that enforced grain requisition would be counter-productive, as War Communism had been a decade earlier.

[edit] Fall from Power

However, Bukharin's support of continuation of 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 open to attacks first by Zinoviev and now Stalin. Stalin attacked Bukharin's views, portraying them as capitalist and declaring that the revolution would be at risk without a strong policy that encouraged rapid industrialization.

Having helped Stalin achieve unchecked power against Left Opposition, Bukharin found himself easily outmaneuvered by Stalin. Bukharin attempted to gain support from earlier foes including from 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 Kahn” who changed policies to get rid of rivals, were leaked by Trotskyist press and subjected him to accusation of factionalism. Stalin used his control of the party machine to replace Bukharin's supporters in the Rightist power base in Moscow, trade unions, and Comintern. As a result, Bukharin lost his position in the Comintern in April 1929 and editorship of Pravda, and he was expelled from the Politburo on November 17 of that year. Bukharin was forced to renounce his views under pressure.

International supporters of Bukharin, Jay Lovestone of the Communist Party USA among them, were also expelled from the Comintern. They formed an international alliance to promote their views, calling it the International Communist Opposition, though it became better known as the Right Opposition, after a term used by the Trotskyist Left Opposition in the Soviet Union to refer to Bukharin and his supporters there.

[edit] Great Purge

Stalin's collectivization policy proved to be disastrous as Bukharin predicted, but Stalin by then achieved unchallenged authority within Party leadership. However, there were signs that moderates among Stalinists sought to end official terror and bring a general change in policy now that mass collectivization was largely completed and the worst was over. Although Bukharin never challenged Stalin since 1929, his former supporters including Martemyan Ryutin drafted and circulated clandestinely anti-Stalin platform, which called Stalin “evil genius of the Russian Revolution.” Stalin wanted to impose death penalty to those involved despite Lenin's injuction against bloodletting among Party members, but he was resisted by moderates.

More importantly, Sergey Kirov, a Leningrad party leader, was emerging as popular leader of the moderates. Although Kirov himself was a staunch Stalin loyalist, he was in favor of general relaxation and reconcilliation toward former oppositionists. In 1934 party congress, Kirov was elected to central committee with only three negative votes, the fewest of any candidate, while Stalin received 292 negative votes.

In the brief period of thaw in 1934-1936, Bukharin was politically rehabilitated and was made editor of Izvestia in 1934. There, he consistently highlighted the dangers of fascist regimes in Europe and need for "proletariat humanism". He was also the principal framer of the Soviet Constitution of 1936, which promised freedom of speech, the press, assembly, religion, and the privacy of the person, his home, and his correspondence.

However, Kirov was assassinated in Leningrad in December 1934, and his death was used by Stalin as a pretext to launch the Great Purge, in which about a million people were to perish as Stalin eliminated all past and potential opposition to his authority. Many historians now believe that Kirov's assassination in 1934 was arranged by Stalin himself or at least that there was sufficient evidence to reach such a conclusion.^[3].]] After Kirov's assassination, Stalin's NKVD charged ever growing group of former oppostionists with Kirov's murder and other charges of treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage.

[edit] Tightening Noose

Shortly before the purge started in earnest, Bukharin was sent to Paris by Stalin in February 1936 to negotiate the purchase of Marx and Engels archives, held by German Social Democratic Party(SPD) before its dissolution by Hitler. He was joined by his young wife Anna Larina, which therefore opened the possibility of exile, but he decided against it saying that he could not live outside Soveit Union.

Bukharin, who was 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 with Boris Nicolaevsky, a Menshevik leader who held the manuscripts on behalf of SPD, formed the basis of "Letter of an Old Bolshevik", which was very influential in contemporary understanding of the period (espeically Ryutin Affair and 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 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."^[4] 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."^[5] In Dan's account, Bukharin’s acceptance of the Soviet Union’s new direction is thus a result of his utter commitment to Party solidarity. To André Malraux, he also confided, "Now he is going to kill me". He allegedly spoke to the U.S. ambassador William Bullitt of the strange, pro-Hitler sentiments that were taking hold of Stalin. To his boyhood friend, Ilya Ehrenburg, he expressed suspicion that the whole trip was trap set up by Stalin. Indeed, his contacts with Mensheviks during this trip would feature prominently in his trial.

[edit] The Trial

Following the trial and execution of Zinoviev, Kamanev, and other leftist Old Bolsheviks in 1936, Bukharin and Rykov were arrested following a plenum of the Central Committee in January 1937 and were charged with conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state.

Bukharin was tried in Trial of the Twenty One on March 2-13, 1938 during the Great Purges, along with ex-premier Alexei Rykov , Christian Rakovsky, Nikolai Krestinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, 16 other defendants alleged to belong to the so-called "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites." Meant to be the culmination of previous show trials, it was now alleged that Bukharin and others sought to assassinate Lenin and Stalin from 1918, murder Maxim Gorky by poison, partition the U.S.S.R and hand out her territories to Germany, Japan, and Great Britain.

Even more than earlier Moscow show trials, Bukharin's trial horrified many previously sympathetic observers as they watched allegations become more absurd than ever and the purge expand to include almost every living Old Bolshevik leaders except Stalin. For some prominent communists such as Bertram Wolfe, Jay Lovestone, Arthur Koestler, and Heinrich Brandler, the Bukharin trial marked their final break with communism and even turned the first three into fervent anti-Communists eventually. ^[6] Bukharin’s confession symbolized the depredations of communism, which not only destroyed its sons but also conscripted them in self-destruction and individual abnegation. ^[7]

While Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured and his letters from prison does not show suggestion that he was tortured, it is also known that his interrogators were instructed with order: "beating permitted." Bukharin held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence" wore him down. 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. ^[8]

Bukharin's confession and his motivation became subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's acclaimed novel Darkness at Noon and philosophical essay by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in Humanism and Terror. His confessions were somewhat different from others in that while he pled guilty to "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 written confession and refuse to go any further. Also the fact that he was allowed to write in prison suggests that some kind of deal was reached as a condition for confession.

There are several interpretations of Bukharin's motivations (beside being coerced) in the trial. Koestler and others viewed it as true believer's last service to the Party (while preserving little amount of personal honor left) whereas Bukharin biographer Stephen Cohen and Robert Tucker saw traces of Aesopian language, with which Bukharin sought to turn the table into anti-trial of Stalinism (while keeping his part of bargain to save his family). While his letters to Stalin - he wrote 34 of very emotional and desperate letters tearfully protesting his innocence and professing his loyalty - suggests 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 presumably stemmed from reality of ruinous Stalinism (although he could not of course say so in the trial) and the impending threat of fascism (which required kowtowing to Stalin, who became the personification of the Party). The result was a curious mix of fullsome confessions (of being "degenerate fascist" working for "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." ^[9]) and saying that "the confession of 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 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." ^[10]

While in prison, he wrote at least four book-length manuscripts including a lyrical autobiographical novel, How It All Began, philosophical treatise Philosophical Arabesques, a collection of poems, and Socialim and Its Culture - all of which were found in Stalin's archive and published in 1990's).

[edit] Execution

Romain Rolland among others wrote to Stalin seeking clemency: "An intellect of the Bukharin type is a treasure for his country. We are all to blame for the death of the chemist of genius Lavoisier, we, the bravest of revolutionaries, who cherish the memory of Robespierre - nonetheless profoundly regret and grieve. I beg you to show clemency." ^[11] He had earlier wrote 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: "It does not have to be answered." Bukharin was executed on March 15, 1938, but the announcement of his death was overshadowed by the Nazi Anschluss of Austria.

'Koba, why do you need me to die?' Bukharin wrote in a note to Stalin just before his execution. ("Koba" was Stalin's revolutionary pseudonym, and Bukharin's use of it was a sign of how close the two had once been. The note was found still in Stalin's desk after his death in 1953.).^[12]

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 rehabilitated.

Bukharin was officially rehabilitated by the Soviet state under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988.

[edit] Political stature and achievements

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 and 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 made several notable contributions to Marxist-Leninist thought, most notably 'The Economics of the Transition Period' (1918) and his recently reprinted prison writings, 'Philosophical Arabesques' (a text which clearly reveals Bukharin had corrected the 'one-sidedness' of his thought), as well as being a founding member of the Soviet Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a keen botanist. His primary contributions to economics werewere his critique of marginal utility theory, his analysis of imperialism, and his writings on transition to communism in Soviet Union. ^[13]

"Voice of the stalking shadow" (Pin thodarum nizhalin kural), a Tamil novel by Jeyamohan is based on the life of Nikolai Bukharin.

See also: Communist Party of the Soviet Union

[edit] Cartoonist

Nikolai Bukharin was a gifted cartoonist who left many cartoons on contemporary Soviet politicians. The renowned artist Konstantin Yuon once told him: “Forget about politics. There is no future in politics for you. Painting is your real calling."^[14] His cartoons are sometimes used to illustrate biographies of Soviet officials. Russian historian Yury Zhukov stated that Nikolai Bukarin's portraits of Joseph Stalin were the only ones drawn from the original, not from a photograph.^[15]

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, as the Sword of Revolution, 1925	Grigory Zinoviev, 1926	Vladimir Lenin, 1927	Sergo Ordzhonikidze if he was younger and served in tsarist Guard, 1927
Aaron Soltz, 1927	Joseph Stalin	Joseph Stalin, 1929	Mikhail Kalinin or "What you see is what you get", 1929
Kliment Voroshilov

[edit] Notes

[edit] Further reading

• Anna Larina, This I Cannot Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin's Widow, W. W. Norton, 1991, hardcover, 384 pages, ISBN 0-393-03025-3
• Stephen F. Cohen, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A political biography, 1888–1938, Knopf, 1973, hardcover, 495 pages, ISBN 0-394-46014-6; trade paperback, Oxford University Press, 1980, ISBN 0-19-502697-7; trade paperback, Vintage Books, ISBN 0-394-71261-7

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Nikolai Bukharin

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Nikolai Bukharin

• Nikolai Bukharin archive at marxists.org
• The evil that Stalin did, George Walden on Bukharin's death-cell letter to Stalin