Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1888-1938)

Member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Marxist theorist and economist; important leader of the Communist International. He was born on October 9, 1888, to a primary school teacher’s family in Moscow. He joined the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1906. He joined the Moscow University in 1907. In 1908, he was elected as a member of the “Moscow Committee” of the party. From 1909 to 1910, he was arrested three times by the Tsar government, and exiled to Onega in 1911, from there he escaped to Western Europe. In 1912, he met Lenin in Krakow and assisted Lenin in editing the Pravda. In October 1916, he went to the United States to edit the Russian magazine New World (Novy Mir) in New York. After the February Revolution in 1917, Bukharin returned to Moscow and was elected as a member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, a member of the Executive Committee of the Moscow Soviet and a member of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik). Later, he became editor-in-chief of the Pravda newspaper. From July to August of the same year, he was elected as a member of the Central Committee at the Sixth Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party (Bolshevik). During the October Revolution, he was a core leader in the Moscow uprising.

In 1918, when Lenin advocated the signing of the “Brest-Litovsk Treaty” with Germany and the withdrawal of Russia from the World War I, Bukharin firmly opposed, resigned from the post of editor-in-chief of the Pravda, led the left-wing communist group within the party, and insisted on the continuation of the war between Russia and Germany. After Lenin’s serious criticism and patient guidance, Bukharin was able to correct his mistake. In July, he disbanded the left-wing communist group, returned to the Central Committee of the party, and resumed work in the editorial department of Pravda, he repeatedly made public self-criticism of his mistakes.

In March 1919, Bukharin became a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. In March 1919, he was also elected as an alternate member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1919-1923), and then as a full member of the Political Bureau (1924-1929) at the 13th National Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), a member of the Third International Executive Committee from 1919 to 1929, and the General Secretary of the Third International Executive Committee from 1925 to 1929. Since November of 1926, he presided over the work of the Political Secretariat of the Third International.

From 1928 to 1930, there were sharp differences and line struggles within the Party, regarding the principles and policies on socialist construction. In the debate on whether a single country can build socialism, Bukharin and Stalin fought resolutely with Trotsky, Zinoviev and others, and he became one of the prestigious leaders inside and outside of the party at that time. On the issue of industrialization and agricultural collectivization, Bukharin opposed calling on farmers to pay “Food Tax” (Prodnalog) for the sake of industrialization which would bring about the danger of collapsing worker-peasant alliance, he advocated an integrated national economic balance, slowing down the pace of industrial development and delaying agricultural collectivization. According to Bukharin Soviet Union should focus on developing agriculture, build itself into an agricultural country, exploit the comparative advantages of the international economy and export large quantities of agricultural products. These ideas were then considered to be the right-wing opportunist line, representing the interests of the rich farmers and the bourgeoisie. In April 1929, Central Committee of the Communist Party of Russia (Bolshevik) comprehensively criticized Bukharin’s view.

In the same month, he was removed from the post of editor-in-chief of the Pravda, and in July, from the post of member of the Presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, and in November, he was dismissed from the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Russia (Bolshevik). Later, he served as the director of the technical Bureau of the Supreme Board of the National Economy (Vesenkha). In 1931, he served as a member of the Supreme National Economic Commission and as a professor at Moscow University. From February 1934 to January 1937, he was the editor-in-chief of the Izvestia. He took part in the constitution making process in 1935 and he was one of the main drafters. In February 1938, he was arrested and expelled from the Party due to being accused of organizing a so-called “Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites”— a conspiracy group. On March 14, 1938, he was one of the six people whom were executed by the Soviet government for treason.

On February 4, 1988, the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union decided to revoke the trial judgment of 1938 in the case of Bukharin and restored Bukharin’s reputation. On May 10, the Presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences decided to reinstate Bukharin as an academician of the Academy of Sciences. On June 1921, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (C.P.S.U.) decided to restore Bukharin’s party membership.

Bukharin was a keen intellectual and he wrote abundant works throughout his life, including many fields such as Marxist political economy, literature and art, history and so on. His main theoretical works include Economic Theory of the Leisure Class (1914), Imperialism and World Economy (1915), Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State (1916), ABC of Communism (1919), The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period (1920), Historical Materialism:A System of Sociology (1921), and others. Although Bukharin had certain flaws and mistakes in theory, he made some contributions to the exploration of socialist construction. Lenin said that he is “a Marxist economist with outstanding knowledge”.