Nikolai Bukharin was the editor of the newspaper. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin biography

Revolutionary activity. Start

During the bourgeois coup in 1905-1907, he took part in student demonstrations. In 1906 he joined the Bolsheviks. In 1907, together with Grigory Sokolnikov, he prepared a youth conference, which became the harbinger and backbone of the future Komsomol organization.

In 1908-1910, as part of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP, he collaborated with the gaining weight of trade unions. Then it turned out that at least four heads of the Moscow Committee were secret police agents. Among them are Roman Malinovsky. For a long time Lenin did not want to believe that Malinovsky was a traitor. With the light suggestion of Malinovsky, who knew about where Bukharin could be, in June 1911 Nikolai Ivanovich was detained and exiled from Moscow to the Arkhangelsk province. In connection with this arrest, he was expelled from the university for revolutionary activities.

Emigration

During his stay in Krakow in 1912, he became acquainted with. This acquaintance made a deep impression on the young revolutionary. Until the death of the leader of the proletariat, Bukharin admired him, tried to be like Lenin. In emigration, he was constantly engaged in self-education, studied the works of Marx, Engels, utopian socialists, analyzed, compared them.

In 1914, when it began, the Austro-Hungarian authorities suspected him as a spy and expelled him from the country. Then he left for Switzerland. But he did not stay here for long either. In 1915 he crossed France and England and emigrated to Sweden. In Stockholm he was known as Moisha Dolgolevsky.

In 1915, Bukharin wrote an analytical article "World Economy and Imperialism", in which he analyzed the features of capitalism in the first decades of the twentieth century. Lenin liked the article. He wrote a preface to the article, used some calculations in the book "Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism".

But Bukharin disagreed with Lenin over the right of nations to autonomy and sovereignty.

He wrote for the Scandinavian anti-government press and participated in meetings of the émigré club, which the Swedish police considered rebellious. On March 23, 1916, Nikolai Ivanovich was arrested. In April 1916 he was removed to Norway. Lived in Oslo, Copenhagen. In October 1916 he crossed over to the United States. In New York, he became close to Leon Trotsky and Alexandra Kollontai. For some time he edited the revolutionary newspaper Novy Mir together with Lev Davidovich.

Return to Russia. Party activities

In April 1917, NI Bukharin returned from emigration and was elected a member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP. He worked tirelessly in the Moscow Party Committee, edited “Izvestia of the Moscow Revolutionary Military Committee. He actively conducted propaganda and explanatory work during the October Revolution.

On September 25, 1919, he was wounded by a bomb, which the anarchists threw into the building where the Moscow Committee of the RCP (b) was located. As a result of this terrorist attack, 55 people were injured and 12 people died.

Nikolai Ivanovich, along with Lenin, Chicherin, Bonch-Bruevich and Lunacharsky, was one of the most educated people in the Central Committee of the party. He was entrusted with areas requiring deep knowledge.

• In 1919-1920 he was a member of the Comintern IK.
• June 2, 1924 transferred to the Politburo of the Central Committee
• 1929 -1932 was a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR, headed the scientific and technical department.
• In 1931 -1936. he participated in the publication of the popular science journal Socialist Reconstruction and Science.
• Since 1932, he was appointed director of the Institute of the History of Science and Technology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, formed on the basis of the Commission for the History of Knowledge, which worked until his last arrest.

Bukharin was the developer and co-editor of the first issue of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.

Stalin's meat grinder

Despite Bukharin's seemingly friendly relations with, the repressions did not pass him by. Stalin did not look at the fact that Bukharin supported him in the struggle against Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Iosif Vissarionovich understood that Bukharin enjoyed some authority in the party, was especially popular with young people, and although he could hardly move him, displace him, but ... Being himself a man capable of meanness, the leader of the party and the state, he suspected everyone. Bukharin's disagreement on the development of NEP and collectivization gave Stalin reason to accuse Bukharin of conspiracy against the party and personally against him, Joseph Dzhugashvili. Looking at the numerous executions of the old Bolsheviks, his friends and associates, Nikolai Ivanovich was full of fear and wrote numerous humiliated letters of repentance to the tyrant. The leader played him like a cat with a mouse, encouraging and calming, and then ...

Russian economist, Soviet state and party leader. Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1929).

Activities before the revolution

Born into a family as a son school teacher... From 1893 he lived in Chisinau, where his father worked as a tax inspector.

After graduating from high school, he studied at the economics department of the law faculty of Moscow University (expelled in 1911 for participating in revolutionary activities). During the 1905-07 revolution, together with his best friend Ilya Ehrenburg, he took an active part in student demonstrations organized by students of Moscow University. In 1906 he joined the RSDLP, joining the Bolsheviks. At the age of 19, together with Grigory Sokolnikov, he organized a youth conference in Moscow in 1907, which was later considered the predecessor of the Komsomol.

In 1908-1910 - a member of the Moscow Committee of the RSDLP, worked in trade unions. At this time, he became close to V.M. Smirnov and met his future wife N.M. Lukina.

In June 1911 he was arrested and exiled for 3 years to Onega (Arkhangelsk province), in the same year he escaped from exile and illegally left for Hanover, then for Austria-Hungary.

Abroad, Bukharin met Lenin, with whom he subsequently maintained friendly relations. In Vienna, he also met with Stalin, whom he helped in working with German-language sources in the preparation of the article "Marxism and national question". In emigration, he continued to engage in self-education, studying the works of both the founders of Marxism and utopian socialists, and his contemporaries. A. A. Bogdanov had a particularly strong influence on the formation of Bukharin's views.

In 1914, with the outbreak of the First World War, he was arrested by the Austro-Hungarian authorities on suspicion of espionage and exiled to Switzerland. From 1914 he lived in London, from 1915 - in Stockholm. In April 1916 he was expelled from Stockholm, lived in Christiania (Oslo), Copenhagen, from October 1916 - in New York (USA), where he met Leon Trotsky and Alexandra Kollontai and edited (from January 1917), together with Trotsky, the journal Novy Mir ".

In 1915 he wrote the work "World Economy and Imperialism", devoted to the analysis of the characteristics of capitalism at the beginning of the 20th century. This work was positively assessed by Lenin, who wrote a preface to it (not published before the revolution) and used a number of its provisions in his work Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). On the other hand, in the discussion that unfolded with the outbreak of the First World War among the Social Democrats about the right of nations to self-determination, Bukharin opposed the position of Lenin and his supporters (in particular, Stalin and Zinoviev). Lenin called the corresponding views of Bukharin and Pyatakov, who joined him, "a caricature of Marxism" and regarded them as a relapse of economism of the 1890s, associated with an inability to distinguish political issues from economic.

After the February Revolution of 1917, Bukharin immediately decided to return to his homeland, but returned to Russia only in May 1917, since he was arrested in Japan, through whose territory he was returning. In Vladivostok, he was arrested by local authorities for agitation among soldiers and sailors.

"Favorite of the whole party." Theorist and economist

In 1917 he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the RSDLP (b), after which he worked in the Moscow Party Committee and edited the printed edition of Izvestia of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee. He was active in propaganda work during the October Revolution of 1917, occupying radical leftist positions. John Read in his book "Ten Days That Shook the World" argues that Bukharin was considered "more leftist than Lenin." For many years, with a short break in 1918, he was the editor-in-chief of the Pravda newspaper and, in fact, the leading party ideologist. Prepared proposals for the nationalization of industry and the creation of economic management bodies headed by the Supreme Council National economy(VSNKh).

In 1917-1918, as the editor of the "left-communist" newspaper "Kommunist", he was the leader of the "left" communists, together with other "left" communists, as well as the left SRs, he opposed both the signing of peace with the Germans in Brest-Litovsk, and against the position of the head the Soviet delegation of Leon Trotsky, demanding the continuation of the line on the world proletarian revolution. Later, during a discussion initiated by Trotsky in 1923 about factions in the CPSU (b), he admitted that during the discussion Brest Peace part of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries invited him to participate in the arrest of Lenin for 24 hours and the creation of a coalition socialist government from opponents of a peace treaty with the Central Powers. The Left SRs argued that this government would be able to break the treaty and continue the revolutionary war, but Bukharin flatly refused to participate in the conspiracy against the leader of the party and state. Some time after the signing of the Brest Peace Treaty, he went over to Lenin's side, as evidenced by the return of Bukharin to the post of editor-in-chief of Pravda. September 25, 1919 Bukharin became a victim terrorist attack: he was wounded by a bomb thrown by anarchist terrorists into the premises of the Moscow Committee of the RCP (b) in Leontievsky Lane.

In May 1918 he published the widely known pamphlet "The Program of the Communists (Bolsheviks)", in which he theoretically substantiated the necessity of labor service for the non-labor classes. After the publication of his works "The Political Economy of Rentiers" and "World Economy and Imperialism" he became one of the leading theoretical economists of the RCP (b). In 1919-1920 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern.

In October 1919, together with Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, he wrote the brochure "The ABC of Communism", which subsequently went through more than 20 reprints. In May 1920 he wrote (partly in collaboration with Georgy Pyatakov) the work “The Economy of the Transition Period. Part I: General theory of the transformation process ”. These works were generally positively received by Lenin, who, however, believed that a number of issues were being considered by Bukharin from the point of view of not Marxism, but the "general organizational science" developed by A. A. Bogdanov, and also criticized the author for an overly pompous style of presentation. Of interest is Lenin's comic review of the book "The Economy of the Transition Period", which parodies Bukharin's hobby for foreign language vocabulary:

The excellent qualities of this excellent book are somewhat dequalified, as they are limited by the fact, primo, that the author does not sufficiently substantiate his postulates ...

From "Recensio academica" by V. I. Lenin for the book "Economics of the Transition Period"

On the whole, Bukharin's works of 1918-1921 were written under the strong impression of the practice of "war communism" associated with the widespread use of non-economic coercion in the country's economy. A characteristic quote:

From the point of view of being large in size historical scale, proletarian coercion in all its forms, from executions to labor service, is, paradoxical as it may sound, a method of developing communist humanity from the human material of the capitalist era.

Economics in Transition, Chapter X

In the "trade union discussion" of 1920-1921, Bukharin took a position that he himself regarded as a "buffer" between the main parties to the dispute: Lenin and Trotsky. He tried to prove that the disagreement between the participants in the discussion is based on a misunderstanding and resembles a dispute between a person who calls a glass a glass cylinder and a person who calls the same glass a drinking tool. Lenin (who considered Bukharin's position to be a kind of Trotskyist) used the example of Bukharin with a glass to popularize some views of Marxism that, from his point of view, were not understood by Trotsky and Bukharin (Lenin's reasoning later became known as the "dialectic of a glass").

Summing up his observations of Bukharin's activities, Lenin gave her the following characterization, which later became widely known:

Bukharin is not only the most valuable and outstanding theoretician of the party, he is also rightfully considered the favorite of the whole party, but his theoretical views can be very doubtfully attributed to completely Marxist, for there is something scholastic in him (he never studied and, I think, never understood quite dialectic).

From "Letter to the Congress" by V. I. Lenin

Struggle against Trotsky and differences with Stalin

Since November 1923 he has been actively fighting the "Trotskyist" Left Opposition. The death of Lenin on January 21, 1924 was a serious mental blow for Bukharin, who was one of the leader's best comrades. Bukharin reacted to the death of the founder of the Soviet state with a sincere and emotional appeal from the Central Committee of the RCP (b). After Lenin's death, he was transferred to the Politburo of the Central Committee (June 2, 1924) and became one of the most influential leaders of the party and state. Like Zinoviev, he opposed the widespread publicity of Lenin's Testament. During this period, Bukharin became a close friend of Stalin, who, in one of the conversations, characterized the leading members of the party as follows: "We are with you, Bukharchik, the Himalayas, and all the rest are small spots." Stalin on "you" and who called him Koboi in his speeches; Stalin, in turn, called Bukharin "Nikolasha" or "Bukharchik"). Bukharin provided substantial support to Stalin in the struggle against Trotsky (1923-1924), Kamenev and Zinoviev (1925-1926) and in the final defeat of Trotsky (1927). According to some reports, he led the expulsion of Trotsky to Verny in 1928.

After analyzing the reasons for the failures of "war communism", Bukharin turned into an active supporter of the new economic policy proclaimed by Lenin. After Lenin's death, he emphasized the need for further economic reforms in line with the NEP. At this time, Bukharin put forward the famous slogan (1925), addressed to the peasants: "Get rich, accumulate, develop your economy!"

alism "(later Stalin called the slogan" not ours ", and Bukharin retracted his words). At the same time, Bukharin also took part in the development of the Stalinist theory of "socialism in one separate country", opposed to Trotsky's idea of ​​a permanent world revolution.

In 1928, he opposed increased collectivization, proposing an evolutionary path when cooperation and the public sector (a mixed economy) would gradually economically oust the individual economy, and the kulaks would not be subject to physical elimination as a class, but would gradually be equalized with the rest of the village. In the article “Notes of an Economist” (September 30, 1928), published in Pravda, Bukharin declared the only acceptable development of the agrarian and industrial sector without a crisis, and all other approaches (primarily Stalin's) - “adventurous”. This, however, contradicted Stalin's course of general collectivization and industrialization (moreover, Trotsky's views on the need for forced industrialization, which Stalin had rejected as unrealizable only three years earlier, also influenced Stalin's program to a certain extent).

Bukharin in disgrace

A week later, the Politburo condemned Bukharin's speech, and he, in a polemic, in response to the Secretary General's demand to "end the line of inhibition of collectivization," called Stalin "a petty Eastern despot." In November 1928, the Central Committee plenum called the position of Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky a "right deviation" (as opposed to Trotsky's "left deviation"). At the April Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission (1929), Stalin declared that "yesterday were still personal friends, now we are at odds with him in politics." The plenum completed the "rout of Bukharin's group," and Bukharin himself was removed from his posts. Refusing to "repent", on November 17, 1929, he was removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee. Soon, some of the members of the Communist International who supported Bukharin's position, led by immigrants from the American Communist Party, were expelled from the Comintern, forming the International Communist Opposition. But Bukharin himself admitted his mistakes a week later and announced that he would wage a "resolute struggle against all deviations from the general line of the party and, above all, against the Right deviation." At the XVII Congress of the CPSU (b) (1934), in his speech, he declared: "The duty of each party member is to rally around Comrade Stalin as the personal embodiment of the mind and will of the party." In 1934 he was transferred from member to candidate member of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b).

Manager and journalist. Bukharin and the intelligentsia

Bukharin, due to the breadth of his knowledge, was considered (along with Lenin and Lunacharsky) one of the most erudite representatives of the Bolshevik Party after its coming to power. Bukharin was fluent in French, English and German... V Everyday life was friendly and welcoming, remained available in communication.

In 1929-1932 he was a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council of the USSR, head of the scientific and technical department. Since 1932 - member of the board of the USSR People's Commissariat of Heavy Industry. At the same time (1931-1936) he was the publisher of the popular science and public journal "Socialist Reconstruction and Science" ("SoReNa"). Bukharin was one of the editors and an active participant in the first edition of TSB. The foreign intelligentsia (in particular, André Malraux) had a project to put Bukharin at the head of the editorial board of the unrealized international "Encyclopedia of the XX century".

From 1934 until the second half of January 1937 he held the post of editor-in-chief of the Izvestia newspaper, in which he attracted the best journalists and writers of that time, and paid a lot of attention to the content and even design of the newspaper. In February 1936, he was sent abroad by the party to buy the archive of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels belonging to the German Social Democratic Party, which was exported to a number of European countries after the Nazis came to power in Germany.

The name of Bukharin was associated with the hopes of a part of the intelligentsia of that time for an improvement in the state's policy towards it. Bukharin had warm relations with Maxim Gorky (later Bukharin was accused at the trial of involvement in the murder of Gorky); Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pasternak used his help in conflicts with the authorities. In 1934 Bukharin delivered a speech at the First Congress of Soviet Writers, where he placed Pasternak extremely highly and also criticized the "Komsomol poets." The party, however, soon dissociated itself from this speech. At the same time, earlier Bukharin participated in the posthumous persecution of Yesenin, having published in 1927 in the newspaper Pravda the article "Evil Notes", published later a separate book.

Bukharin wrote that

Yesenin's poetry is essentially a peasant, half turned into a "merchant": in patent leather boots, with a silk cord on an embroidered shirt, "boozer" falls today to the leg of the "empress", tomorrow licks an icon, the day after tomorrow he smears his nose with mustard in a tavern , and then "mentally" laments, cries, is ready to hug the dog and make a contribution to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra "for the commemoration of the soul." He can even hang himself in the attic from the inner emptiness. "Nice", "familiar", "truly Russian" picture!

Ideino Yesenin represents the most negative traits Russian countryside and the so-called "national character": scuffle, the greatest inner indiscipline, the deification of the most backward forms of social life in general.

Constitution

The embodiment of Bukharin's hopes for democratization and abandonment of the rigid dictatorship of one party was the Constitution of the USSR in 1936, the draft of which Stalin, according to numerous testimonies, instructed Bukharin to write almost alone (with the participation of Radek). The Constitution contained a list of fundamental rights and freedoms, eliminated the differences between citizens in rights by social origin that had existed in the USSR until then, and other provisions marking the end of the revolution and the formation of a unified Soviet society. Formally, it was the most democratic constitution in the world. However, under the conditions of that time, many of the democratic provisions of this constitution, which received the name "Stalinist", remained only on paper.

Doom

In 1936, during the First Moscow Trial (over Kamenev, Zinoviev, etc.), the defendants gave evidence (immediately published) against Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky, who allegedly created a "right bloc". Tomsky shot himself the same day. Bukharin learned about the case brought against him while on vacation in Central Asia... Immediately after the trial, on September 1, 1936, Bukharin wrote to Voroshilov: “The cynic-murderer Kamenev is the most disgusting of people, human carrion. I am terribly glad that the dogs were shot ”(perhaps with the expectation of showing this letter to Stalin). But on September 10, 1936, Pravda reported that the USSR Prosecutor's Office had stopped investigating Bukharin and others.

In January 1937, during the Second Moscow Trial, charges were again brought against Bukharin of belonging to conspiratorial activity, and he was confronted with the arrested Radek. In February 1937 he went on a hunger strike in protest against accusations of his involvement in conspiratorial activities, but after Stalin said: "To whom are you giving an ultimatum, the Central Committee?" - stopped it. At the plenum of the Central Committee in February 1937, he was expelled from the party and arrested on February 27. He insisted on his innocence (including in letters to Stalin); wrote an open letter to the party that has come down to us in the late 1980s, written down by his wife from memory. In prison (in the inner prison on Lubyanka) he worked on the books "The Degradation of Culture under Fascism", "Philosophical Arabesques", on the autobiographical novel "Times", and also wrote poetry. Now these texts have been published (NI Bukharin. Prison manuscripts, vol. 1-2, Moscow, 1996).

He was one of the main defendants (along with Rykov) at the show trial in the case of the "Anti-Soviet Trotskyist bloc" (Third Moscow trial). Like almost all other defendants, he pleaded guilty and partly gave the expected testimony. In his last word, however, he made an attempt to refute the accusations raised against him. Although Bukharin nevertheless declared: "The monstrosity of my crimes is immeasurable," he did not directly confess in any particular episode. On March 13, 1938, the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR found Bukharin guilty and sentenced him to death. The petition for clemency was rejected, and two days later he was shot in the village. Kommunarka of the Moscow Region, buried there.

On April 13, 1956, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee adopted a decision "On the study of open trials in the case of Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev, Tukhachevsky and others," after which on December 10, 1956, a special commission ruled on Stalin's abuses, but refused to rehabilitate Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev and Kamenev on the basis of "their many years of anti-Soviet struggle." Nikolai Bukharin, like most of those convicted in this process, except for Heinrich Yagoda (who was not rehabilitated at all), was rehabilitated only in 1988 (February 4) and in the same year he was posthumously reinstated in the party (June 1988) and in the USSR Academy of Sciences (May 10 1988).

A family

In his first marriage, Bukharin was married to Nadezhda Lukina (his cousin), who was arrested in 1938 and soon died in the camps.

The second time (1921-1929) he was married to Esther Gurvich (born in 1895). From this marriage - daughter Svetlana (b. 1923). Despite the renunciation of this family from Bukharin back in 1929, both mother and daughter ended up in camps, from where they left only after Stalin's death.

For the third time (since 1934) he was married to Anna, the daughter of the party leader Yu. Larin, who also went through the camp and is known as a memoirist; she lived to see her husband's rehabilitation. Bukharin's son from Anna Larina - Yuri (b. 1936), artist; grew up in an orphanage under the name Yuri Borisovich Gusman, knowing nothing about his parents. He received a new surname from his foster mother Ida Guzman, the aunt of his real mother. Now he bears the surname Larin and patronymic Nikolaevich.

NI Bukharin (1888 -1938) - was one of the leading ideologists of Bolshevism, in 1918-1928 he edited the newspaper "Pravda". In the first years of Soviet power, Bukharin held ultra-left positions, then he became one of the leaders of the Social Democratic wing in the party. But, in any role, he was characterized by extreme nihilism, hatred of the Russian people.

Seeing in Nikolai Bukharin his own "democratic" soul - the whole set of qualities of a "leader with a human face" - psychological instability, ambition, weak-willedness, verbiage, lack of firmness (according to V.I. Lenin, "soft as wax"), complete absence administrative qualities, irresponsibility, inclination to political adventurism - the anti-communist "new-thinker" Mikhail Gorbachev put forward the thesis that in the person of the "favorite of the party" Bukharin Soviet people had a real alternative to JV Stalin and that if the Bukharin line had won, then the history of the Soviet Union could have taken a different, more "civilized" and "humane" path.

And the wholesale, indiscriminately, rehabilitation of all state criminals except Yagoda, perpetrated by the notorious "commission of Alexander Yakovlev" with the wording - "in the absence of corpus delicti" - and the restoration of enemies of the people in the ranks of the CPSU, was a prelude to the counter-revolutionary coup of the 90s years of the twentieth century, as a result of which new Bukharins came to power, who destroyed the fruits of labor efforts of many generations, unwound as much as they could, and continue to spin the wheel of history backward, “lowered” the once heroic Soviet people, continue to pour mud on its glorious past, its highest culture , his ideals and his immortal leaders ...

Since the journalism of the last decade has not hammered any other alternatives to Stalin into the mass consciousness, let us take the trouble to reflect on how Bukharin's personality corresponded to the qualities of a leader, or, in modern jargon, a political leader.

"Party Favorite"

From Lenin's "Letter to the Congress": "Bukharin is not only the most valuable and outstanding theoretician of the party, he is also rightfully considered the favorite of the whole party, but his theoretical views can be very doubtfully attributed to completely Marxist, for there is something scholastic in him (he did not study and, I think, never fully understood dialectics) ”.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, with his iron logic, would never have written like that, had he been in good health: on the one hand, “the most valuable and greatest theoretician of the party” and “favorite of the whole party,” and on the other, “there is something scholastic in him” and “ he never studied "," never fully understood dialectics "...

But what assessment of this man was given a few years later by one of his supporters and ardent opponents of Stalin - Martemyan Ryutin (at the same time, even without textological analysis with the naked eye, it is clear that Ryutin was well acquainted with Lenin's view of the “favorite of the party”: “If Bukharin is like the theorist of Marxism and Leninism, for all his mistakes and blunders, for all his penchant for the mechanical method of thinking, remains a major figure, then as a political leader he turned out to be below any criticism. An intelligent, but short-sighted person, honest but spineless, quickly panicking, confusion and prostration, not capable of serious and prolonged political struggle with a serious political adversary, easily amenable to intimidation; sometimes carried away by the masses, sometimes disillusioned with them, unable to organize and lead the party masses, but on the contrary, himself in need of constant and vigilant guidance from others - such is Bukharin as a political leader. "

Bukharin - ideologue of violence

During the struggle around the Brest-Litovsk Peace, the meaning of which was to "sacrifice space and gain time", Bukharin turned out to be one of Lenin's main opponents, with enthusiasm calling for a merciless revolutionary war until the complete victory of the World Revolution even at the cost of the death of the Soviet Republic. He said: “Let the Germans beat us. By preserving our republic, we are losing the chances of an international movement. " At the same time, he himself was not going to take up arms and was ready, in case of failure, to emigrate to South America... The Left SRs, as Bukharin himself later said, even suggested that he arrest Lenin for a day and declare war on Germany, which, of course, he did not dare to do.

Bukharin became the "greatest theorist of the party" when, in co-authorship with the economist Preobrazhensky, he published the book "The ABC of Communism", which became a popular textbook for party youth. Here are some excerpts from this tutorial:

“The very structure of the bourgeois court protects the bourgeoisie. The proletarian court is a fair trial ”,“ In the bloody struggle against capital, the working class cannot refuse the capital punishment. But a purely objective comparison of the proletarian court with the court of the bourgeois counter-revolution reveals the extreme softness of the workers' judges in comparison with the executioners of bourgeois justice. "

Complaining about the "extreme softness" of the proletarian court, Bukharin theoretically substantiates the need for revolutionary violence not only against class enemies, but also against all mankind: material of the capitalist era ”.

Did he think of himself as an object of revolutionary violence? Unlikely. But the fact remains: the main theoretician of the ideology of violence was none other than Bukharin himself. And it is Bukharin (not Lenin or Stalin) who owns the words he said immediately after the Bolsheviks conquered power: "We can have only two parties: one in power, the other in prison."

Bukharin instead of Stalin?

Until 1928, Nikolai Bukharin and Joseph Stalin were not only political allies, but also rather close friends. Until then, they had fierce disputes with the Left Opposition led by Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev. But on July 11, 1928, Bukharin made an unexpected visit to his longtime implacable enemy, Lev Kamenev. They talk for a long time and continue the conversation the next morning. "Lenin Guards" Bukharin asks "Lenin Guards" Kamenev, who took notes during the conversation, to consider it confidential. "In a voice trembling with excitement" (Kamenev noted this in his notes) Bukharin said that Stalin was pursuing an internal political line that was detrimental to the cause of the revolution. As the only way out of difficulties with grain procurements, he proposes emergency measures, which means a return to the policy of "war communism". Stalin's thesis that resistance ("who will win?") Should increase in proportion to the growth of socialism is "idiotic illiteracy", this is a formula that will lead the country of the Soviets to disaster. (This is where the "leading party theorist" gave a blunder: life confirmed the brilliant Stalinist thesis about the intensification of the class struggle as socialism developed. , compatriots, unheard of privileges, as a result of which in almost four decades (namely, that was the margin of safety of Stalin's socialism), the party elite finally degraded, establishing the most cruel bourgeois-criminal dictatorship over the proletariat - L.B.).

Discussing with Kamenev the possibility of changes in the composition of the Politburo, passing off wishful thinking, Bukharin spoke of “the readiness of some of its members (in particular, Ordzhonikidze and Voroshilov) to prefer Kamenev and Zinoviev to Stalin and Molotov. (On this occasion, in a letter to Ordzhonikidze in June 1929, Voroshilov wrote: "Bukharin is a trash man and is capable of speaking the most vile fictions in his eyes, while making a particularly innocent and holy vile face on his always Jesuit face)." Bukharin said to Kamenev: “The differences between us and Stalin are many times more serious than all our differences with you. He will cut our throats. " At the same time, he dropped a meaningful phrase: "This time his displacement will not take place through the Central Committee." The Swiss communist Jules Humbert-Droz later recalled that at about the same time Bukharin confessed to him that he would even agree to the murder of Stalin.

Kamenev, of course, knowingly stenographed the contents of the conversation with Bukharin. Making an appropriate summary: “It was all ingratiating. I do not believe a single word of him, "Kamenev acquainted his associates with this sensational document and soon published it in the Trotskyist Bulletin of the Opposition, published in Paris.

Upon learning of this, Stalin showed excellent restraint, saying: “In the old days they said about the philosopher Plato: we love Plato, but the truth is even more. The same could be said about Bukharin: we love Bukharin, but the truth, but the party, but we love the Comintern even more. "

Stalin never solved a single issue individually, but always collectively. And in late January - early February 1929, a joint meeting of the Politburo and the Presidium of the Central Control Commission was held, where Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky were charged with factional activity, and they, in turn, issued a statement against Stalin. Then I.V. Stalin launched a counterattack: “Sadly enough, we have to state the fact of the formation in our party of a special group of Bukharin consisting of Bukharin, Tomsky, Rykov. This is a group of right-wing deviators, whose platform provides for a slowdown in the pace of industrialization, the curtailment of collectivization and the freedom of private trade. Members of this group naively believe in the saving role of the fist. Their trouble is that they do not understand the mechanism of the class struggle and do not see that in fact the kulak is a sworn enemy. Soviet power... Lenin was a thousand times right when, back in 1916, in a letter to Shlyapnikov, he remarked that Bukharin was "devilishly unstable in politics." And now, to top it all, it became clear that Bukharin, on behalf of the entire group, was conducting backstage negotiations with Kamenev with the aim of creating a factional bloc of Bukharinites and Trotskyists directed against the party and its Central Committee. "

Let's pay attention: Bukharin was opposed to forced industrialization, without which it would have been impossible to create the material and technical base of Victory in the pre-war decade. Refusal to collectivize agriculture would make Soviet industry dependent on the whims of the kulaks, for whom Bukharin put forward the slogan "Get rich!" (the notorious Bukharin theory of "growing the fist into socialism"), and freedom of private trade would lead to the restoration of capitalism in a technically backward (if Bukharin's program was adopted) agrarian country, which on the eve of war would objectively lead Soviet Union to inevitable defeat, even if all the cavalrymen of the Civil War, taken together, would oppose the Fuhrer's motorized army, which was considered invincible.

This is without taking into account the political and personal qualities of the alternative leader - the "favorite of the party", who could afford at a Politburo meeting, for example, to stand upside down on the sofa and stand like that for a minute - a liberty that is unforgivable even for "Bukharchik".

(Note: having adopted Bukharin's slogan "Enrich yourself!"

Koba's Patience

Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky were removed from their posts in April 1929, but six months later, after they admitted their mistakes, they were appointed to less responsible posts. Bukharin, for example, was appointed editor-in-chief of Izvestia (and before that he headed the newspaper Pravda).

He continued to live in the Kremlin, next to Stalin, whom he still called "Koba", and he, as in the old days, called him "Bukharchik", and, as always, they addressed each other as "you." Moreover, although Stalin could not help irritating that Bukharin kept a small zoo on the territory of the Kremlin, Koba put up with this too.

It is known that even at the height of their friendship, Stalin more than once took Bukharin under his protection from the attacks of the Trotskyist opposition: “Do you want Bukharin's blood ?! We will not give you his blood, so you should know. "

At the 17th party congress in 1934, Bukharin concluded his speech with the words: “Long live our party, this is the greatest military comradeship, a comradeship of hardened fighters, hard as steel, courageous revolutionaries who will win all victories under the leadership of the glorious field marshal of the proletarian forces, the best of the best - Comrade Stalin! "

These words of Stalin conquered. Having met Bukharin on the stairs in the evening, he said amiably: “Bukharchik ... Why did you call Comrade Stalin some kind of field marshal? Comrade Stalin is the same ordinary soldier of the Party, like all of us ... It is not good to distribute ranks in the Party, Nikolai. I would have called better tea with jam to drink a lonely mare. "

In the summer of that year, Stalin phoned to congratulate Bukharin on a good report on poetry at the First Congress of Writers. He said that he especially liked the statement about Demyan Bedny, that he was in danger of falling behind the times.

In 1935, at a banquet hosted for graduates of military academies, Stalin made a toast in honor of Bukharin: “Let us drink, comrades, for Nikolai Ivanovich, we all love and know him, and whoever remembers the old will be out of sight!”.

In the same year, the twice-divorced 47-year-old Bukharin marries 16-year-old Anna Larina, who idealized him, the daughter of the famous Menshevik Larin, whom the “morally stable” “favorite of the party”, suitable for her fathers, took possession of without waiting for her to come of age. the next year, in 1936, Stalin sent him to Paris with his young wife: it was against the rules - to send him abroad with his wife - perhaps Stalin did not want Bukharin to return back to the USSR, where clouds continued to gather over him. But, looking ahead, I will say that Bukharin has returned ...

In Paris, Bukharin negotiated with the Mensheviks Dan and Nikolayevsky about the purchase of Karl Marx's archives. During his two-month stay in Paris, he somehow unexpectedly for Dan came to his house and for some hours for some reason talked in detail about Stalin. Dana's wife left her memories of this. In the conversation, he jokingly remarked that the Bolsheviks' interest in Marx is so great that they would agree to purchase even his remains in order to transport them to Moscow. Further fantasizing, he said that in this case a monument to Marx would be erected immediately. And next to it will be erected a monument to Stalin - higher and larger. Stalin would read Capital with a pencil in hand to make corrections in the margins of this book. Bukharin continued: “Marx, of course, is not in danger of anything from him, unless he appears to the Russian worker as a dwarf in comparison with the great Stalin. No, no, Stalin is a small, evil man, but no, not a man at all, but a devil. "

"I wrote a letter to Klim Voroshilov ..."

And four months after his return, in August 1936, after learning about the final political process above Zinoviev and Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, on September 1, 1936, wrote a letter to Kliment Voroshilov, where he calls Kamenev "a cynic murderer", "the most disgusting of people, human carrion." “I'm terribly glad that the dogs were shot,” Bukharin wrote. And this despite the fact that at this trial personally against him, as well as against Rykov and Tomsky, charges of criminal offenses were first heard. Upon learning of these testimonies, Tomsky shot himself on August 22, but it seemed to Bukharchik that he would carry it ...

One would think that the schadenfreude of one of V.I. Lenin in relation to other former members of the top leadership, who ranked themselves among the so-called "Leninist" guard, which Stalin allegedly innocently destroyed, has a personal background: we remember how Lev Kamenev unceremoniously acted with Bukharin, but the trouble is that the former editor-in-chief " Pravda ”, this, according to Trotsky,“ ruthless polemicist ”who wrote“ hundreds of violent articles ”against him, could not express his political emotions in any other way, except with the help of shameless abuse. It was with his light hand that the tradition of unbridled style was established for many years in Pravda (feuilletons by Zaslavsky, caricatures by B. Efimov and Kukryniksy, Marshak's signatures to them).

"Bukharin's polemic style," writes Academician D.V. Kolesov, resembles an angry dog ​​barking and is quite akin to the style of Goebbels' propaganda, especially when it repeated the crimes of the "bourgeois world." Bukharin ranges from licentiousness to categorical at best. Neither Trotsky, nor Zinoviev, nor Stalin had such a style of polemics. And even the most hot-tempered of all - Lenin - allowed himself only to take away his soul in one or two "strong" epithets. But that all the vocabulary? - In no case". (DV Kolesov. Struggle after victory. M. "Flint". 2000. S. 113).

An inglorious end

From last word defendant Bukharin at an open trial (evening session on March 12, 1938):

“At the very beginning of the process, to the question of the President of the Citizen - whether I plead guilty, I answered with a confession.

I repeat once again, I plead guilty to treason to the socialist homeland, the most serious crime that can be, in organizing kulak uprisings, in preparing terrorist acts, in belonging to an underground anti-Soviet organization ...

I can a priori assume that Trotsky, and other allies in crimes, and the Second International, especially since I talked about this with Nikolayevsky, will try to protect us, in particular, me. I reject this defense, because I am on my knees before the country, before the party, before all the people. The enormity of my crimes is immeasurable, especially at the new stage of the USSR's struggle. With this consciousness I await the verdict ... "

While in the internal prison of the NKVD of the USSR, Bukharin, sentenced to death on March 13, 1938, appealed to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. "

In his petition for clemency, Bukharin wrote:

“I ask the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for a pardon. I consider the verdict of the court to be a fair retribution for the grave crimes I have committed ... I do not have a single word of protest in my soul. For my crimes I had to be shot ten times. The proletarian court made a decision that I deserved by my criminal activities, and I am ready to bear the well-deserved punishment and die, surrounded by just indignation, hatred and contempt of the great heroic people of the USSR, whom I have so meanly betrayed ...

I am glad that the power of the proletariat crushed everything criminal that saw in me its leader and the leader of which I really was ...

I ask the Presidium of the Supreme Council for mercy and mercy ...

I am firmly convinced that years will pass, great historical frontiers will be crossed under the leadership of Stalin, and you will not complain about the act of mercy and mercy that I ask of you. I will try with all my strength to prove to you that this gesture of proletarian generosity was justified. "

An extract from the minutes No. 2 of March 14, 1938 of the meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR stated:

“Petition of Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin for clemency.

The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided:

The petition to pardon Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, convicted by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on March 13, 1938 in the case of the anti-Soviet "Pravotrotsky bloc" to death by shooting.

Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR

(A. Gorkin) ".

Anechka Larina, romantically in love with her hero, according to her own admission (Izvestia. No. 283, October 9, 1988, p. 3), made half a century later, “had a faint hope that Bukharin would die proudly ... This hope was unfounded by nothing and was born only from great love for Nikolai Ivanovich. "

Evidently connected with this recognition is the so-called "testament letter" of Bukharin, addressed to the "future generation of party leaders," whose concluding words are: "Know, comrades, that on that banner that you will carry on your victorious march to communism there is also my drop of blood. " According to Bukharin's widow, he dictated this letter to her and forced her to memorize it before his arrest, after which the letter was destroyed ... Not convincing. Most likely, this is also the fruit of "great love", which became the most sensational publication of 1988.

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1888-1938) - Soviet politician, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1928). Member of the Revolution of 1905-07 and October 1917. In 1917-18 the leader of the "left communists". In 1918-29 the editor of the newspaper Pravda, at the same time in 1919-29 a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern.

In 1929-32 Nikolai Bukharin was a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR, from 1932 a member of the board of the People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry. In 1934-37 editor of Izvestia. Member of the Central Committee of the party in 1917-34. Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee in 1924-29. Candidate member of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee in 1923-24. Member of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.

The very structure of the bourgeois court guards the bourgeoisie.

Bukharin Nikolay Ivanovich

In the end. 20s Nikolai Bukharin opposed the use of emergency measures during collectivization and industrialization, which was declared "a right-wing bias in the All-Russian CP (b)." Works on philosophy and political economy. Repressed; rehabilitated posthumously.

Nikolai Bukharin, Soviet statesman and party leader, professional revolutionary.

We can only have two parties: one in power, the other in prison.

Bukharin Nikolay Ivanovich

A family. Gymnasium-Bolshevik

Nikolai Bukharin was born into the family of a teacher, a graduate of the Faculty of Mathematics of Moscow University, his mother is an elementary school teacher. Already during his studies, thanks to his father, Bukharin developed an interest in natural history, literature and painting. Until the end of his life Bukharin collected collections of birds and butterflies of scientific significance; deep knowledge of literature and painting allowed him to become in the future one of the best Soviet literary critics and art critics of that time.

In 1905, in the midst of revolutionary events, Nikolai Bukharin, together with his junior high school friend, began working in the Moscow city organization of the Bolsheviks. In 1906, as a high school student, Bukharin joined the RSDLP (b).

Proletarian coercion in all forms, from executions to labor service, is a method of developing communist humanity from the human material of the capitalist era

Bukharin Nikolay Ivanovich

Professional revolutionary

In 1907-1910 Nikolai Bukharin studied at the Economics Department of the Law Faculty of Moscow University. Bukharin paid little attention to his studies, since he directed the propaganda and illegal activities of the Bolsheviks among the students. Bukharin was expelled from the university in connection with his arrest; in 1911 he was exiled to Arkhangelsk, then to Onega, from there he fled through Moscow to Hanover.

In emigration, Bukharin worked in the Bolshevik and socialist organizations in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, and in the Scandinavian countries. In 1912 in Krakow he met V. I. Lenin. At the Social Democratic Conference in Bern in 1915, he sharply criticized Lenin's views on the self-determination of nations, Lenin's slogan of Russia's defeat in the imperialist war and the idea of ​​"universal peace."

In 1915, Nikolai Bukharin published the book World Economy and Imperialism, containing the same theoretical errors as the works of Hilferding and Lenin. From October 1916 Bukharin began to cooperate, and in January 1917 he actually headed the editorial office of the New World newspaper in New York (an organ of Russian social democracy). A member of the editorial board of Novy Mir was L. D. Trotsky, with whom Bukharin's relations did not work out and soon grew into mutual hostility.

In a bloody struggle against capital, the working class cannot refuse capital punishment. But a purely objective comparison of the proletarian court with the court of the bourgeois counter-revolution reveals the extreme softness of the workers' judges in comparison with the executioners of bourgeois justice

Bukharin Nikolay Ivanovich

In April 1917, Nikolai Bukharin returned to his homeland, where fateful events unfolded not only for Russia, but for the whole world. Bukharin, the brightest representative of the young generation of the "Leninist guard" of professional revolutionaries, endlessly cut off from life due to their unnatural existence, took an active part in them.

After October

In the spring and summer of 1917, Nikolai Bukharin followed in the wake of Lenin's policy, but at a meeting of the Central Committee of the party on September 15, 1917, he voted to hide and burn Lenin's letters calling for an armed uprising from the party. During the October Revolution, Bukharin headed the editorial board of Izvestia of the Moscow Military Revolutionary Committee. According to eyewitnesses, during a report on the bloody October events in Moscow, Bukharin burst into tears. However, speaking on January 5, 1918 at the opening of the Constituent Assembly, it was Bukharin who threatened his deputies with a civil war: "the question of the power of the revolutionary proletariat ... is a question that will be resolved by that very civil war that cannot be stopped by any incantations."

Kamenev is a cynic murderer, the most disgusting of people, human carrion. I'm terribly glad that the dogs were shot. (September 1, 1936, letter to Kliment Voroshilov)

Bukharin Nikolay Ivanovich

After the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the turn of the day arose the question of peace with Germany, on which Nikolai Bukharin sharply disagreed with Lenin, who advocated peace on any terms. Bukharin headed the "Left Opposition" (see "Left Communists"), which had an advantage in the Central Committee. Bukharin's theory of the "revolutionary guerrilla warfare”Against the regular German army, he only says that Bukharin and his supporters in the Central Committee (Bubnov, Felix Dzerzhinsky, Krestinsky, Uritsky, etc.) completely inadequately perceived the real state of affairs. However, Bukharin, like most of the leaders of the party, assigned the Russian revolution the role of only a fuse, from which the world was supposed to flare up. Hence the logic of Nikolai Bukharin: let the German smash Russia and thereby transfer the flame of the revolution to Europe.

After the signing of the "obscene" Brest Peace Treaty on March 3, 1918, Bukharin returned to editing Pravda, the directive organ of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. He fully justified the "Red Terror" that began after the assassination attempt on Vladimir Lenin on August 30, 1918, although he could not help but understand, as even an underachieved lawyer, that the combination of the functions of the investigation, trial and execution of sentences in the Cheka could not but give rise to monstrous atrocities and arbitrariness. Millions of victims civil war, famine, epidemics, the destruction of the country's economy, the savagery of the surviving population Bukharin considered the "inevitable costs of the revolution."

In the field of political economic theory, the views of Nikolai Bukharin underwent sharp fluctuations. In 1918 he advocated the nationalization of only the largest enterprises; in the works "The ABC of Communism" (1919) and "The Economy of the Transition Period" (1920), he advocated the draconian measures of war communism, for the total state regulation of distribution. With the beginning of the NEP, Bukharin made a 180. the peasantry, all its strata must be told: get rich, accumulate, develop your economy. " At the 14th Party Congress in December 1925, Bukharin was sharply criticized for such a "petty-bourgeois" position.

Know, comrades, that on the banner that you will carry in a victorious march to communism, there is also my drop of blood. (Bukharin's "testament" addressed to the "future generation of party leaders")

Bukharin Nikolay Ivanovich

In March 1919 Nikolai Bukharin was elected a candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b), and in June 1924 - a member of the Politburo, which he remained until November 1929. These years are the peak of his party career. In 1919-1929 he served as a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern and its presidium. In 1928 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. When Academician Bukharin Stalin sent to Leningrad to convince the disloyal Nobel laureate, Academician Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, in the correctness of the chosen socialist path of development, the malicious old man first of all asked his "colleague" if he knew the multiplication table.

"Favorite of the whole party"

In Lenin's so-called testament, "Letter to the Congress", Nikolai Bukharin was called "the favorite of the whole party." After the death of the leader, he became the idol, first of all, of the party youth, who were drawn to Bukharin after the decline of Trotsky's star in 1925. This special position of Bukharin was greatly facilitated by his personal qualities: outwardly attractive, accessible, democratic, free from the greed and arrogance characteristic of most communist leaders; in the unchanging costume of the era of "revolutionary romanticism" - a simple shirt, leather jacket, boots. Cheerful, noisy, infecting the Bolshevik youth with his irrepressible energy and enthusiasm, Bukharin was the only pure intellectual among the Bolshevik leaders. There is an insoluble riddle in Bukharin's political biography - the "favorite of the party" was completely devoid of lust for power. “I personally have never had the pathos of power” (from Bukharin's letter to Stalin, 1936). For a politician of the first magnitude, this is a unique phenomenon.

Around Nikolai Bukharin was formed a group of intellectual, talented young people of very diverse backgrounds (children of prominent Bolsheviks and prominent cadets), which received the name "Bukharin's school". Almost all of them were repressed and died in the Stalinist meat grinder.

Members of the Moscow Party Committee (N.A.Uglanov and others) were also supporters of Nikolai Bukharin, A.I. Rykov (chairman of the Council of People's Commissars), M.P. Tomsky (head of trade unions) recognized Bukharin as their leader. Bukharin's constant political opponent, GE Zinoviev, complained in 1925 that Bukharin had received "a monopoly on the political and literary representation of the party, on all political and educational work." Indeed, Nikolai Bukharin was not only the editor of Pravda and the theoretical journal of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolshevik) (since 1924), but also a member of the editorial boards of countless periodicals, encyclopedias, and academic publications.

With all these trump cards in hand, Nikolai Bukharin intended to enter into an alliance with Stalin so that, thanks to Stalin's organizational power, he could make his economic program the party program. But Stalin needed Bukharin and his "school" even more, since Stalin's group suffered from intellectual infirmity; The secretary general relied on the young partocrats brought up by him, who had become skilled in the apparatus games, but completely devoid of their own political ideas (VM Molotov, GM Malenkov, etc.).

Stalin needed Nikolai Bukharin as a means, as a battering ram to crush Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky. The "favorite of the party" had to oppose them to the Marxist-programmatic casuistry, and then share the fate of the defeated enemies. Stalin saw right through Bukharin, Bukharin, taking Stalin's friendship at face value, displayed astounding political blindness. Stalin unmistakably used the enormous Bukharin authority, his impeccable reputation, with the help of which the secretary general secured victory in the fight against his more powerful opponents, with the Leninist guard, which led him to sole power.

In the Stalin-Bukharin alliance, he was the first to deal with organizational and apparatus issues, and Nikolai Bukharin - the theory of Marxism, propaganda, the economic program, the Comintern. Fundamental differences were outlined in socio-economic policy: Bukharin insisted on expanding the NEP, and Stalin - on its curtailment, on accelerated industrialization and forced collectivization. Nevertheless, Stalin defended Nikolai Bukharin from the attacks of ardent Stalinists: "We will not give offense to our Bukharchik." But after the defeat of the “new opposition” in 1927, Bukharin and his supporters were accused of “right deviation,” that is, of opposing the “spreading of the peasants,” “defending the kulak.”

In July 1928, Nikolai Bukharin secretly proposed a political alliance to Kamenev, who recorded their conversation (later the recording became known). By his passionate accusations against Stalin, Bukharin deprived his group and himself of the last chances of salvation: “Stalin's course leads to the death of the revolution. Stalin is an unprincipled intriguer; he changes program settings depending on who he wants to destroy. Having expelled Trotsky from Moscow, he wants to deal with Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky and their associates. " The time had come for a ruthless apparatus of reprisals against the right deviators. The Leninist Guard seemed to meekly awaiting their fate. Only in Notes of an Economist (Pravda, September 1928) and in his speech on January 24, 1929, The Political Testament of Lenin, did Bukharin dare to point out that Stalin's policy in the city and countryside came into complete contradiction with the ideas of Lenin's last articles (On cooperation ”, etc.). The conclusions followed in November 1929, when at the Plenum of the Central Committee Nikolai Bukharin was removed from the Politburo and removed from his post as editor of Pravda.

In 1930, following Nikolai Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky were dismissed from their posts. The Moscow party committee was cleared of the Bukharinites, and the party press was cleared of the pupils of his school.

Political agony

Despite the humiliating demotion (he was offered in 1930 the post of head of the sector of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of the USSR), he agreed to take this post. Bukharin publicly repented and promised to resolutely fight "against all deviations from the general line of the party and, above all, against the Right deviation." Rykov and Tomsky joined him. But in 1933 Nikolai Bukharin broke off personal relations with them, in fact, betraying his long-term associates.

In 1934 Nikolai Bukharin received a new appointment - the post of editor of the newspaper Izvestia CEC of the USSR. In the same year, Bukharin married for the third time the young Anna Larina, the adopted daughter of the prominent Menshevik and then the Bolshevik Yu. Larin. A purely personal event became a political circumstance - now Stalin had at his disposal a reliable means of making "Bukharchik" slander himself and his party comrades for the sake of saving his beloved wife and soon-born son. One more an important event happened in Bukharin's life in August 1934 - he was instructed to make a keynote speech at the opening of the first Congress of Soviet Writers, which was received ambiguously by the writers' meeting.

In 1935-1936, by order of the secretary general, Nikolai Bukharin, who was under continuous open surveillance, worked on the Constitution of the USSR, which went down in history as Stalin's, although in fact it should be called Bukharin's. He is particularly successful with the section on civil and democratic rights. In the spring of 1936, Stalin sent Bukharin with his wife abroad for the archives of the German Social Democracy, including for the manuscripts of Marx (the archives were taken out of fascist Germany B. Nikolaevsky, a prominent Menshevik, a well-known historian and archivist of Russian Social Democracy).

Nikolai Bukharin visited Prague, Berlin, Copenhagen, Paris. In European capitals, he met with Mensheviks, former Bolsheviks, foreign communists, well-known cultural figures; with everyone he was extremely frank and, first of all, in his assessment of Stalin and his fate - "now he will kill me", Bukharin no longer had any illusions on this score. He was advised not to return to Moscow, but Bukharin could not do this, believing that by emigration he would erase his Bolshevik past.

In the summer of 1936, the Central Committee granted Nikolai Bukharin a vacation, which he decided to spend in the Pamirs. From there he sent loyal letters to Stalin, calling him the old party nickname "Koba". And at this time in Moscow was trial over Zinoviev and Kamenev, in which they gave falsified evidence against Bukharin. He immediately returned to Moscow and tried to get an appointment with the highest officials in the state, but no one accepted him. Then Bukharin wrote a letter addressed to the members of the Politburo, in which he swore allegiance to Stalin: “I defended the party line and the Stalinist leadership with genuine conviction in all areas ... Which one? Refuse from collective farms when they grow and grow richer in the public field ”; "Victorious milestones: industrialization, collectivization, the destruction of the kulaks, two great five-year plans, concern for people, mastery of technology and Stakhanovism, a prosperous life, a new constitution"; "That the scoundrels were shot [Zinoviev and Kamenev] - excellent, the air was immediately cleared." But Nikolai Bukharin already understood that most of their fantastic confessions were the result of the most severe torture. Nobody answered the letter, then Bukharin decided to turn to Voroshilov, who answered him in the Stalinist spirit: "vile attacks", "vile epithets", "scoundrel."

Bukharin did not calm down and, anticipating an imminent arrest, wrote a letter to "The Future Generation of Party Leaders," which his wife memorized. Thanks to her, it reached the “future generation”. A common thread running through the entire letter is the thought: "The filter of history will inevitably wash away the dirt from my head sooner or later," but it is impossible to find an answer in the letter to the question of why, in fact, the activities of the party have turned into a tangle of monstrous crimes.

In February 1937 Nikolai Bukharin was arrested in the case of the Pravotrotskyist anti-Soviet bloc. At the trial, which took place on March 2-13, 1938 in Moscow in the House of Unions, Bukharin assumed full responsibility for the fictitious crimes of the never-existing Trotskyist bloc and did not admit any specific accusations (from mixing crushed glass into food to preparing the murder of Lenin in 1918). and Stalin in the 1930s). Bukharin's first words at the trial "I plead guilty ... for the entire totality of crimes committed by this counter-revolutionary organization" made senseless his further duel with the prosecutor A. Ya. Vyshinsky and the chairman of the court Ulrich. Those who did not believe in the guilt of Nikolai Bukharin were themselves doomed; the rank-and-file members of the party were, as a rule, illiterate, and they could not understand and appreciate Bukharin's ingenious maneuvers during the trial. On March 15, 1938, Bukharin, Rykov, GG Yagoda, former People's Commissar of the NKVD, and others were shot. Rumors circulated in Moscow that Bukharin and Rykov met death with courage, unlike Zinoviev and Kamenev. Soon Bukharin's wife was arrested, she spent about twenty years in camps and exiles, their tiny son was brought up in various orphanages and for a long time did not know whose son he was.

In 1988, during the years of perestroika, Nikolai Bukharin was rehabilitated and reinstated in the party. An unjustified apology began for Bukharin as a theoretician of Marxism, an opponent of Stalin and a democrat. But his theoretical legacy was depreciated with every year of publicity and understanding of the market economy. And this is not surprising, since Bukharin was not a research scientist. Nevertheless tragic fate Bukharin, who in Stalin's " Short course VKP (b) "was assigned the role of the failed killer of Lenin, deserves the most careful and objective consideration as the most prominent representative Leninist Guard.

Nikolay Ivanovich Bukharin - quotes

Pavlov makes a mistake, because Poland is not a defeated country at all. But this lapsus can be excused.

The attitude of the working class to the peasantry is built here, too, along the lines of the relationship of the planter to the colonial object of exploitation. As we can see, this "point of view" is completely "linked" with the reasoning of Comrade. Preobrazhensky about "exploitation". In other words, this is not an accidental slip of the tongue, not a lapsus linguae, not an "unfortunate expression"; at Comrade Preobrazhensky has its own sequence, has its own logic; but this "logic" and this "sequence" is the logic and sequence of a systematically developed error.

Proletarian coercion in all forms, from executions to labor service, is a method of developing communist humanity from the human material of the capitalist era.

The very structure of the bourgeois court guards the bourgeoisie. The proletarian court is a fair court.

In a bloody struggle against capital, the working class cannot refuse capital punishment. But a purely objective comparison of the proletarian court with the court of the bourgeois counter-revolution reveals the extraordinary softness of the workers' judges in comparison with the executioners of the bourgeois justice.

Soviet political and statesman Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was born on October 9 (September 27, old style) 1888 in Moscow into a family of teachers.

In 1905, being a high school student, he was a member of the revolutionary organization of students. In the second half of 1906 he joined the Bolshevik Party and worked in the Zamoskvoretsky District as a propagandist.

In 1907, Bukharin entered the Economics Department of the Law Faculty of Moscow University. He paid little attention to his studies, since he directed the propaganda and illegal activities of the Bolsheviks among the students.

From 1907 to 1908, he was a propagandist and agitator in the Khamovnichesky District, in 1908 he was appointed the responsible organizer of the Zamoskvoretsky District, in 1909 he was elected to the Moscow Committee of the Bolshevik Party.

In 1909 Bukharin was arrested twice. He was expelled from the university due to his arrest.

In 1910, Bukharin was again at party work in legal institutions. At the end of 1910, he was again arrested in connection with the defeat of the Moscow party organization. Until June 1911 he was in prisons in Moscow, before the trial he was sent into administrative exile in Onega, from where he fled and in October 1911 he emigrated to Germany.

In emigration he worked in the Bolshevik and socialist organizations in Germany, Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, in the Scandinavian countries. In 1912, in Krakow, he met the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin.

His second wife was Anna Larina (1914-1996), the adopted daughter of the famous Bolshevik Yuri Larin. In 1937 she was arrested and spent 18 years in the camps. She contributed to the rehabilitation of her husband, from 1990 to 1991 she gave lectures about Bukharin.

Their son Yuri (1936-2014), after the arrest of his parents, was brought up in the family of relatives of Boris and Ida Gusmanov, then after the arrest of his adoptive father he was transferred to an orphanage near Stalingrad. He first learned his father's name in 1956, when his mother, Anna Larina, returned from the Stalinist camps. Subsequently, Yuri Larin became a famous artist and teacher.

From his common-law wife Esther Gurvich (1895-1989), Bukharin had a daughter, Svetlana Bukharina (1923-2003). In 1947, she was expelled from Moscow State University, where she was then studying, and was arrested along with her mother. Amnestied in 1953, rehabilitated in 1956. Subsequently, she worked at the Institute of History of the USSR and the Institute of General History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources