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Nikolai Bukharin
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Image:Bucharin.bra.jpg thumb|none|200px|right|Nikolai Bukharin
'''Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin''' ({{lang-ru|Ð?иколай Иванович Бухарин}}), ({{OldStyleDate|October 9|1888|September 27}} –
March 13,
1938) was a
Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917 revolutionary and
intelligentsia intellectual, and later a
Soviet Union Soviet politician.
Bukharin was born in
Moscow to two primary school teachers. 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 czarist secret police, or
Okhranka. 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 Mikhailovich 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 Oblast Arkhangelsk, but soon appeared in Hanover. During this exile, he continued his education and became a major Bolshevik theorist. He developed an interest in the works of non-Marxist economic theorists, such as
Aleksandr Bogdanov, who deviated from Leninist positions.
While in exile, Bukharin wrote several books and edited the newspaper ''
Novy Mir'' (New World) with
Leon Trotsky and
Alexandra Kollontai. During
World War I, he wrote a small book on imperialism from which
Vladimir Lenin later drew some of the ideas he put forward in his larger and better known work, ''Imperialism—The Highest Stage of Capitalism''. Upon his return to Russia, Bukharin became one of the leading Bolsheviks in
Moscow and was elected to the
Central Committee of the CPSU Central Committee. After the revolution, he also became editor of ''
Pravda''.
Bukharin led the opposition of the
Left Communists to the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, arguing instead for the Bolsheviks to continue the war effort and turn it into a world-wide push for proletarian revolution. In
1921, he changed his position and accepted Lenin's policies, encouraging the development of the
New Economic Policy. Some believe that this drastic change of position suggests that Lenin was correct when he remarked in his will that Bukharin had never fully understood Marxism and dialectics. After Lenin's death, Bukharin became a full member of the
Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee Politburo in
1924, and the president of the
Communist International (
Comintern) in
1926.
Image:NikolaiBukharin.jpg left
After
1926, Bukharin, by then regarded as the leader of the Communist Party's right wing, became an ally of the center of the party, which was led by
Josef Stalin Stalin and which constituted the ruling group after Stalin broke his earlier alliance with
Lev Kamenev Kamenev and
Grigory Zinoviev Zinoviev. It was Bukharin who detailed the thesis of "
Socialism in one country" put forth by Stalin in 1924, which argued that
socialism (in Marxist theory, the transitory stage 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.
When Bukharin opposed
Stalin's proposed collectivization of agriculture in
1928, Stalin attacked Bukharin's views and forced him to renounce them. As a result, Bukharin lost his position in the Comintern in April
1929 and was expelled from the Politburo in November of that year. International supporters of Bukharin, led by
Jay Lovestone of the
Communist Party USA, were also expelled from the
Comintern. They formed an international alliance to promote their views, calling it the
International Communist Opposition, though 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.
Bukharin was rehabilitated by Stalin and was made editor of
Izvestia in
1934, but was arrested again in
1937 for conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state. He was tried in March
1938 as part of the
Trial of the Twenty One during the
Great Purges, and was executed by the
NKVD.
Bukharin was officially rehabilitated by the Soviet state under
Mikhail Gorbachev in
1988.
''See also:
Communist Party of the Soviet Union''
Further reading
*
Anna Larina, ''This I Cannot Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin's Widow'', W. W. Norton, 1991, hardcover, 384 pages, ISBN 0393030253
* Stephen F. Cohen, ''Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A political biography, 1888-1938'', Knopf, 1973, hardcover, 495 pages, ISBN 0394460146; trade paperback, Oxford University Press, 1980, ISBN 0195026977; trade paperback, Vintage Books, ISBN 0394712617
External links
-
Nikolai Bukharin archive at marxists.org
Category:1888 births Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich
Category:1938 deaths Bukharin, Nikolai Ivanovich
Category:Old Bolsheviks Bukharin, Nikolai
Category:Comintern people Bukharin, N
Category:Exonerated Soviet death sentences Bukharin, Nikolai
Category:Marxist theorists Bukharin, Nikolai
da:Nikolaj Bucharin
de:Nikolai Iwanowitsch Bucharin
et:Nikolai Buhharin
es:Nikolai Bujarin
eo:Nikolaj BUHARIN
fa:نیکلای بوخارین
fr:Nikolaï Boukharine
it:Nikolaj IvanoviÄ? Bukharin
nl:Nikolaj Boecharin
ja:ニコライ・ブ�ーリン
no:Nikolaj Bukharin
pl:Nikołaj Bucharin
ro:Nikolai Ivanovici Buharin
ru:Бухарин, Ð?иколай Иванович
fi:Nikolai Buharin
sv:Bucharin
zh:尼�拉·布哈林
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