Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin

The Soviet politician and writer Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1858-1938) was a leading theorist of the Communist movement during the Revolutionary period in Russia and throughout the 1920s.

Nikolai Bukharin was born in Moscow, the son of a schoolteacher. As a university student, he became interested in the anticzarist political movement. In 1906 he joined the Leninist faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers' party, then known as the Bolsheviks. He worked for the party as a successful propagandist and organizer. In 1911 he emigrated to Germany and remained abroad, either in Europe or the United States, until the Revolution began in 1917. At this time he began to establish himself as a major theorist, writing Political Economy of the Leisure Class (1912-1913) and World Economy and Imperialism (1915). Gradually, a split emerged between the position taken by Lenin and that of Bukharin with respect to the conditions under which revolution would succeed in Russia. Bukharin and others, who came to be known as the Left Bolsheviks, took the view that the coming socialist revolution could be successful only in a European-wide context, with the emergence of a socialist United States of Europe.

In 1917 Bukharin returned to Russia, but in 1918 his left-wing attitudes caused him to part company temporarily with Lenin. In the face of Lenin's proposal to end World War I for Russia by a separate peace with Germany, Bukharin, Trotsky, Dzerzhinsky, and others argued strongly for changing the world war into a European revolutionary war. But by the time of the Tenth Party Congress (1921), Bukharin's views had begun to undergo extensive change. He supported Lenin's proposal to consolidate the victories of the party inside Russia by means of the New Economic Policy. During this period and the remainder of the 1920s, Bukharin held numerous high party and government posts, including the editorships of Pravda (1918-1929), the journal Bolshevik (1924-1929), and the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. In addition, he was chairman of the Communist International (Comintern, 1919-1929) and a member of the Political Bureau (executive committee) of the party's Central Committee. At the same time he continued his work in Marxist-Leninist political theory, publishing his Theory of Historical Materialism (1921).

After the death of Lenin in 1924, a struggle for power ensued, and the ideological positions as well as the political self-interests of Bukharin and Stalin dictated their cooperation in the defeat of Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev. Ultimately, however, Bukharin himself fell victim to Stalin's tactics when he was condemned as a leader of the so-called Right Deviation (1928-1929). As a result, Bukharin was removed from his high positions by mid-1929, though he continued to be a potential threat to Stalin. By 1934 Bukharin had regained a measure of his former power. His position continued to be precarious, however, and he was finally arrested during the Great Purge in 1937. Brought to trial with 20 others, he was accused of plotting the overthrow of the state. Bukharin was condemned to death and was executed in March 1938.

Further Reading

There is no definitive study of Bukharin in English. The definitive bibliography of Bukharin's published works is in German. In English see Sidney Heitman, Nikolai I. Bukharin: A Bibliography (1969). A short synopsis of Bukharin's philosophical viewpoint is in S. V. Utechin, Russian Political Thought: A Concise History (1964). Background reading includes Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State; First Phase, 1917-1922 (1955), and Robert V. Daniels, The Conscience of the Revolution (1960). An extensive discussion, together with stenographic reports, of Bukharin's trial for treason is in Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen, eds., The Great Purge Trial (1965); see also George Katkov, Trial of Bukharin (1969).

Additional Sources

Bukharin in retrospect, Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1994.

Coates, Ken, The case of Nikolai Bukharin, Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 1978.

Cohen, Stephen F., Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: a political biography, 1888-19, New York, Vintage Books 1975, 1973.

Gluckstein, Donny, The tragedy of Bukharin, London; Boulder, Co.: Pluto Press, 1993.

Larina, Anna, This I cannot forget: the memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin's widow, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1993.

Medvedev, Roy Aleksandrovich, Nikolai Bukharin: the last years, New York: Norton, 1980. □

Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich (b. 9 Oct. 1888, d. 13 Mar. 1938). Communist ideologue Born in Moscow, he studied economics at Moscow University, 1907–10. A prominent member of the Bolsheviks since 1906, he was arrested in 1909 and 1910, before being exiled to Siberia in 1911. He escaped to Germany and subsequently became an important ally of Lenin, whom he met in 1912, as well as Stalin, whom he helped write his first major article on Communism, 1913. In 1915 he went to Sweden to link up with Bolsheviks still in Russia. Expelled from there, he went to the USA to join Trotsky in editing the Russian daily newspaper, Novyi Mir (New World). He returned to Russia in 1917 and played an active part in the Russian (October) Revolution, in which he led the Bolshevik insurrection in Moscow. He opposed Lenin's conclusion of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, pushing instead for the extension of the Russian Revolution abroad. As editor of the main party newspaper, Pravda (Truth), from 1917, and as the author of the standard texts on communism of the early 1920s, the ABC of Communism (with Preobrazhensky, 1919) and Historical Materialism (1922), he was a major force in the spread of Communist propaganda. He defended vigorously the New Economic Policy, and opposed the collectivization of agriculture. Despite his personal integrity, he supported the terror campaigns to increase the hold of the Communist Party over society, arguing that ‘executions are a method of educating humanity’.

After the advent of Stalin, whom he had at first supported, Bukharin became a victim of this terror himself. He was officially expelled from the Politburo in 1929, but remained influential as a Communist theoretician, and became editor of the newspaper Izvestia (1934–6). Indeed, he may even have participated in the drawing up of the 1936 Soviet constitution. Ultimately, his opposition to Stalin and his policies ensured his indictment in the Great Purge. He was arrested in 1937, sentenced to death for an invented plot to kill Lenin, and executed. He was rehabilitated by the Supreme Court of the USSR in 1988.

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , 1888–1938, Russian Communist leader and theoretician. A member of the Bolshevik wing of the Social Democratic party, he spent the years 1911–17 abroad and edited (1916) the revolutionary paper Novy Mir [new world] in New York City. He took part in the Bolshevik Revolution in Nov., 1917 (Oct., 1917, O.S.), in Russia and became a leader in the Comintern and editor of the Soviet newspaper Pravda [truth]. In 1924 he was made a full member of the politburo. As Stalin rose to power in the 1920s, Bukharin first allied with him against Kamenev and Zinoviev . An advocate of slow agricultural collectivization and industrialization (the position of the so-called right opposition), Bukharin lost (1929) his major posts after that position was defeated by the Stalinist majority in the party. He edited Izvestia [news] briefly in 1934 but was dismissed. In 1938 he was tried publicly for treason and was executed. He wrote and translated many works on economics and political science, which gained a growing readership in the late 20th cent. In the Gorbachev era, Bukharin was rehabilitated and posthumously reinstated (1988) as a party member.

Bibliography: See his autobiographical novel How It All Began (1937?, pub. 1994); studies by S. F. Cohen (1980) and M. Haynes (1985).

Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich (1888–1938) Russian communist political theorist. After the 1917 Revolution he became a leading member of the Communist International (Comintern) and editor of Pravda. In 1924, he became a member of the politburo. He opposed agricultural collectivization and was executed for treason by Stalin in 1938.