Nikolay
Bukharin was born in Moscow on 27th September 1888. His parents
were primary school teachers and they helped him get a good education.
Bukharin
became involved in politics during the 1905
Revolution and the following year joined the Bolsheviks.
By 1908 he was a member of the Moscow Party Committee. The following
year he was arrested while at a committee meeting. He was released
but re-arrested several times and in 1910 decided to go into exile.
He lived
in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and the USA. He met all the leading
revolutionaries in exile including Vladimir
Lenin, Lev Kamenev, Gregory
Zinoviev, and Leon Trotsky. He also
wrote for Pravda, Neue
Zeit and Novy Mir.
During
the February Revolution Bukharin returned
to Russia where he joined the Moscow Soviet
and began editing the Bolshevik journal,
Spartak. After the fall of the
Provisional Government Bukharin worked
closely with Mikhail Frunze to gain control
of Moscow.
After the
October Revolution Bukharin was seen
as the leader of the Left Communists. This resulted in him disagreeing
with Vladimir Lenin over both internal
economic and external revolutionary radicalism. He gradually moderated
his views and in 1924 was made a member of the Politburo.
When Vladimir
Lenin died in 1924 Joseph Stalin,
Lev Kamenev and Gregory
Zinoviev
became the dominant figures in the Soviet government. Bukharin was
now seen as the leader of the right-wing of the party. He now rejected
the idea of world revolution and argued that the party's main priority
should be to defend the communist system that had been developed in
the Soviet Union.
Bukharin's
economic policies also became more conservative and he began advocating
a policy of gradualism. He argued that socialism in the Soviet Union
could evolve only over a long period of gestation. His agricultural
policies were also controversial. Bukharin's theory was that the small
farmers only produced enough food to feed themselves. The large farmers,
on the other hand, were able to provide a surplus that could be used
to feed the factory workers in the towns. To motivate the kulaks
to do this, they had to be given incentives, or what Bukharin called,
"the ability to enrich" themselves.
In 1925
Joseph Stalin switched his support from
Lev Kamenev and Gregory
Zinoviev
to Bukharin and now began advocating the economic policies Bukharin,
Mikhail Tomsky and Alexei
Rykov.
When Lev Kamenev and Gregory
Zinoviev
eventually began attacking his policies, Joseph
Stalin argued they were creating disunity in the party and managed
to have them expelled from the Central Committee. The belief that
the party would split into two opposing factions was a strong fear
amongst active communists in the Soviet Union. They were convinced
that if this happened, western countries would take advantage of the
situation and invade the Soviet Union.
Under pressure from the Central Committee, Lev
Kamenev and Gregory
Zinoviev
agreed to sign statements promising not to create conflict in the
movement by making speeches attacking official policies. Leon
Trotsky refused to sign and was banished to the remote area of
Kazhakstan.
In the
spring of 1928, Joseph Stalin began dismissing
local officials who were known to supporters of Bukharin. At the same
time, Stalin made speeches attacking the kulaks
for not supplying enough food for the industrial workers. Bukharin
defending the kulaks in private but refrained from making speeches
or writing articles on this subject in fear of being accused of dividing
the party.
In July,
1928, Bukharin went to see Lev Kamenev.
He told him that he now realized that Joseph
Stalin had played one group off against the other to gain complete
power for himself: "He is an unprincipled intriguer who subordinates
everything to his appetite for power. At any given moment he will
change his theories in order to get rid of someone," Bukharin
told Kamenev. He went on to claim that Stalin would eventually destroy
the communist revolution. "Our disagreements with Stalin are
far, far, more serious than those we have with you," he argued
and suggested that they should join forces to end Stalin's dictatorship
of the party.
By this
time Joseph Stalin had placed his supporters
in most of the important political positions in the country. Even
the combined forces of all the senior Bolsheviks
left alive since the Russian Revolution
were not enough to pose a serious threat to Stalin.
In 1929
Bukharin was deprived of the chairmanship of the Comintern and expelled
from the Politburo. He now began work as editor of Izvestia.
He now loyally supported the policies of Joseph
Stalin. However, this did not stop him being arrested and charged
with treason. Found guilty Nikolai Bukharin was executed on 15th March,
1938.
(1)
In 1924 Nikolai Bukharin wrote an autobiography for The
Granat Encyclopaedia of the Russian Revolution.
Emigration marked a new phase in my life, from which
I benefited in three ways. Firstly, I lived with workers' families
and spent whole days in libraries. If I had acquired my general knowledge
and a quite detailed understanding of the agrarian question in Russia,
it was undoubtedly the Western libraries that provided me with essential
intellectual capital. Secondly, I met Lenin, who of course had an
enormous influence on me. Thirdly, I learnt languages and gained practical
experience of the labour movement.
(2) Nikita
Khrushchev, autobiography published in 1971.
I saw Bukharin speak in 1919 when I was serving in the
Red Army. Everyone was very pleased with him, and I was absolutely
spellbound. He had an appealing personality and a strong democratic
spirit. Bukharin was also the editor of Pravda. He was the Party's
chief theoretician. Lenin always spoke affectionately of him as "Our
Bukharchik". On Lenin's instructions he wrote The ABC of Communism,
and everyone who joined the Party learned Marxist-Lenist science by
studying Bukharin's work.
(3)
Vladimir Lenin, testament dictated
on 25th December, 1922.
Of the younger members of the Central Committee, I want
to say a few words about Piatakov and Bukharin. They are, in my opinion,
the most able forces (among the youngest). In regard to them it is
necessary to bear in mind the following: Bukharin is not only the
most valuable theoretician of the Party, as he is the biggest, but
he also may be considered the favourite of the whole Party. But his
theoretical views can with only the greatest reservations be regarded
as fully Marxist, for there is something scholastic in him.
(4)
In his book Stalin, Isaac
Deutscher described the way Joseph Stalin
switched his support to Nikolai Bukharin.
Tactical
reasons compelled him to join hands with the spokesmen of the right,
on whose vote in the Politburo he was dependent. He also felt a closer
affinity with the men of the new right than with his former partners.
Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky accepted his socialism in one country,
while Zinoviev and Kamenev denounced it. Bukharin may justly be regarded
as the co-author of the doctrine. He supplied the theoretical arguments
for it and he gave it that scholarly polish which it lacked in Stalin's
more or less crude version.
(5)
Freda Kirchwey, The
Nation (March, 1938)
The trial of Bukharin and his fellow oppositionists has broken about
the ears of the world like the detonation of a bomb. One can hear
the cracking of liberal hopes; of the dream of anti-fascist unity;
of a whole system of revolutionary philosophy wherever democracy is
threatened, the significance of the trial will be anxiously weighed.
In spite
of the trials, I believe Russia is dependable; that it wants peace,
and will join in any joint effort to check Hitler and Mussolini, and
will also fight if necessary. Russia is still the strongest reason
for hope.
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