Nikolay Bukharin. Nikolai Bukharin - biography, information, personal life Bukharin real name

Born into the family as the son of a 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 the 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 into economism of the 1890s, associated with the inability to distinguish political issues from economic ones.

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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. Conducted an active propaganda work during October revolution 1917, taking radical left 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. He prepared proposals for the nationalization of industry and the creation of economic management bodies headed by the Supreme Council of the 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 in 1923 by Trotsky on factions in the CPSU (b), he admitted that during the discussion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace, part of the Left Social Revolutionaries invited him to participate in the arrest of Lenin for 24 hours and the creation of a coalition socialist government from opponents of the 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. On September 25, 1919, Bukharin became a victim of a terrorist act: 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 co-authorship 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 a large 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 the 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 popularly express 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 entire 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: "You and I, 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.

In 1928, he opposed increased collectivization, proposing an evolutionary path when cooperation and the public sector (multi-structured 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 villagers. 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 were rejected by Stalin 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 General Secretary'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 All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (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 to the second half of January 1937 he served as 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, the party was sent abroad to buy the archive of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels belonging to the German Social Democratic Party, which was taken to a number of European countries after the Nazis came to power in Germany.

Bukharin's name 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 took part in the posthumous persecution of Yesenin, having published in 1927 in the newspaper Pravda the article "Zye Zye Zametki", which was later published as 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, "booby" 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!

Ideologically Yesenin represents the most negative features of the 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 on 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 dropped the investigation against 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 the 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 internal 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, made an attempt to refute the charges against him. Although Bukharin nevertheless declared: "The monstrousness of my crimes is immeasurable," he did not directly confess in any particular episode. On March 13, 1938, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court 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 Genrikh 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).

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 the daughter of the party leader Y. Larin Anna, 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.

Soviet politician 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 arrested again 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 to administrative exile in Onega, from where he fled and in October 1911 he emigrated to Germany.

In exile 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

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

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

His second wife was Anna Larina (1914-1996), the adopted daughter of the famous Bolshevik Yuri Larin. In 1937 she

Introduction

Bukharin economic policy revolutionary

The reforms begun in 1985 led to the undermining of the foundations of the totalitarian regime, "barracks socialism", which finally took shape in the USSR in the 30s and existed, adapting to changing conditions, without changing its essence, until the mid 80s ... Perestroika (or rather, a "revolution from above" supported in a number of regions of the country "from below") entailed the CPSU's abandonment of its monopoly on power and contributed to the formation of a multi-party political system. Thanks to her, the paths of economic and political transformations were outlined. Within the country and in the international arena, a new political thinking began to take hold, which presupposes the freedom of choice by each people to their socio-political system, the priority of universal human values over class values, the expansion of human rights and freedoms, glasnost and democratization.

After the failure of the August 1991 putsch and the collapse of the USSR, independent states began to emerge, in which the old social order was radically disrupted.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, interest in history and in the history of the USSR and the Bolshevik Party as well increased. The assessments of the activities of party leaders, including Lenin, Bukharin, Rykov and Trotsky, cause controversy. This is not accidental, because the names of these people are primarily associated with the factional struggle against Stalinism within the ruling party and the search for alternative ways of social development. Stalinism as the ideology, policy and practice of the regime of "barracks socialism" in the USSR took the lives of 40-60 million (the exact figure is still unknown) Soviet people and brought society into a state of deep crisis.

Was this tragic path for the Soviet people inevitable? Of course not. In history, there are always alternative ways of development of society. Therefore, the subject of this work was the activities of Bukharin, who tried to wage an active struggle against Stalin and Stalinism.

For a long time he was at the center of the most turbulent events in the history of the Bolshevik Party and Soviet Russia. But, unfortunately, it is not mentioned what a high position Bukharin occupied - an outstanding figure of the first Leninist revolutionary leadership, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the party until 1929, editor-in-chief of Pravda and for many decades the official theoretician of Soviet communism, as well as the actual leader of the Communist International with 1926 to 1929 The role of Bukharin especially strengthened after the death of Lenin - he became (along with Stalin) one of the leaders of the party in the period from 1925 to 1928, the main creator of its moderate policy, which was supposed to lead everyone to the evolutionary path of economic modernization and socialism; during the terrible events of 1928-1929. he became the leader of the anti-Stalinist opposition and even after the defeat remained a symbol of the Bolshevik resistance to the development of Stalinism in the 30s.

Thus, I would like to show the meaning of the political struggle between the Stalin-Bukharin and Zinoviev camps. The creation of the so-called duumvirate and the crisis of the triumvirate, difficult relations between the leaders of the party, Bukharin's role in the defeat of the opposition. But more on that later.

Famous or eminent people often show extraordinary abilities already in childhood. In this respect Bukharin is no exception. Nature generously endowed him with an extraordinary passion for knowing the world. Already in the fifth year of his life, he read and wrote, and soon became interested in collecting butterflies and beetles, drawing and studying natural history.

But how did this talented person show himself when he was thrown into the “millstones of history” in its “fatal moments”? It is this question that we will try to solve in the course of the course work.

Thus, the purpose of this work is to characterize Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin as a politician and theorist. In order to give a complete political portrait of Bukharin, it is necessary to solve a number of problems, which should help to characterize this person. In fact, Bukharin's political activity, for all the completeness of its understanding, was divided into four periods and the characteristics of each of them are a full-fledged task:

) the period before the February Revolution of 1917. I will try to show the process of formation of N.I. Bukharin as a theoretician of Marxism and a politician of the Bolshevik Party.

) the period of revolutions and civil war. In this period, the theoretical and practical steps of Bukharin during the revolutionary transformations of 1917 and his attitude to the policy of "war communism" pursued by the Bolshevik party during the civil war will be of interest.

) New economic policy. I will try to consider the role of Bukharin as one of the main theoreticians of the new economic policy.

) The last period I highlighted is the confrontation between Bukharin and Stalin, his activities in the 30s, condemnation and execution.

Based on the goals and objectives, the structure of this course work is also formed. It consists of an introduction, a main part, divided into four chapters, and a conclusion, which will draw conclusions from the work.

The beginning of Bukharin's career as a politician

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was born on September 27 (October 9), 1888. In the gymnasium in 1904, Bukharin joined a revolutionary circle, of which G. Ya. Sokolnikov and I. G. Ehrenburg were also members. In the second half of 1906 Bukharin became a member of the RSDLP. He works as a propagandist in the Zamoskvoretsky district of the capital. During this period, Bukharin began to deeply study Marxism, in which the young schoolboy was bribed by the "logicality of the basic premises and genuine revolutionism."

After the defeat of the revolution of 1905-1907. NI Bukharin, defending the Bolshevik positions, fought against the liquidators and otzovists. Nikolai Ivanovich stubbornly engaged in self-education, worked in various legal organizations and illegal press organs.

In 1908-1909. NI Bukharin becomes a professional revolutionary. On May 23, 1909, Nikolai Ivanovich first fell into the hands of the Moscow police, in July he was released, and in November 1909 he was arrested again, but was soon released on bail. On December 20, 1910, Nikolai Ivanovich was again arrested and imprisoned in the Suschevskaya prison and then in Butyrki. Bukharin's search card testifies that on January 31, 1911, he was exiled to Onega for 3 years.

In June 1911 Bukharin ended up in Arkhangelsk, and on August 30 fled from Onega. In Moscow, he was given a passport, and in October 1911 he went to Hanover, where his friend, the Bolshevik N.N. Yakovlev, was staying. Later Bukharin wrote: "... in order not to receive hard labor in court (I had 102 st.), I fled abroad." In Hanover, Nikolai Ivanovich settled in a worker's apartment. He spent most of his free time in the library.

In the summer of 1912, Bukharin was vacationing in the Polish resort of Zakopane. In September 1912 Bukharin visited Lenin. In September 1912, shortly after meeting with Lenin, Bukharin was delegated to the Chemnitz congress of the SPD.

In July 1914, in the town of Lunts am See, Bukharin was arrested as a Russian spy and placed in the Melk fortress. The SDPA leadership interceded for the prisoner, and the Austrian authorities sent him to Switzerland. He settled in Lausanne. A group of revolutionaries formed here, which included Bukharin, Troyanovsky, Rozmirovich, Krylenko and others. On October 11, 1914, Lenin arrived here.

On the eve and during the world war, Bukharin wrote several articles and two books that propelled him to the forefront of Bolshevik theoreticians.

The philosophical basis of Bukharin's outlook was undoubtedly Marxism-Leninism. However, he never regarded Marxism as a complete system. Nikolai Ivanovich was greatly influenced by the philosophical views of A. Bogdanov, who tried to combine Marxism with the empirio-criticism of Mach and Avenarius. In addition to Bogdanov, Bukharin was influenced by representatives of Western European sociology (M. Weber, B. Croce, V. Pareto).

Bukharin expressed his philosophical views most fully in The Theory of Historical Materialism, published in 1921, but he expressed many of its ideas much earlier.

On the whole, Bukharin had a mechanistic understanding of dialectics. It was expressed primarily in the theory of equilibrium. According to Bukharin, in nature and society, all phenomena are certain systems that interact with the environment. The basis of the system is the internal balance of its elements and external balance with the environment. This balance is not absolute, but "a mobile balance". Bukharin depicted the Hegelian dialectical triad in the form of a diagram: equilibrium (thesis), imbalance (antithesis) and the restoration of equilibrium on new basis(synthesis). He identified three types of relations between the system and the environment - stable equilibrium, movable equilibrium with a positive sign (development) and movable equilibrium with a negative sign (destruction of the system). Although Bukharin recognized the existence of internal contradictions in the system (for example, the class struggle in society), he attached decisive importance to the relationship between the system and the environment and pointed out that the balance within the system depends on the balance of the external environment.

Bukharin's greatest merit as a Marxist theorist was his attempt to consider historical materialism as a system of “proletarian sociology,” which opened up certain possibilities for the development of applied and general Marxist sociology. Subsequently, Bukharin's sociological approach to the study of society was unjustifiably sharply criticized, especially during the period when Stalin actually banned applied sociology in the USSR.

From the autumn of 1914, Bukharin worked hard for a year on the book "World Economy and Imperialism", which was published in full in 1918. This work gave its author the name of a major economist, and was partially published in the journal "Kommunist" in 1915 by S. Cohen believes that the foundations of "Bukharinism" are laid in this book.

Bukharin, like Lenin, relied primarily on the well-known book of R. Hilferding "Finance Capital" (1912), which contained an analysis of the stage of monopoly capitalism, introduced the categories of finance capital, "organized capitalism", etc. A new word in economic science became Bukharin's idea of a "state-capitalist trust" and of the inevitability of the collapse of imperialism in the course of wars and the proletarian revolution.

The World Economy and Imperialism provides convincing material about the growth of the monopoly tendencies of the then capitalism and the internationalization of all economic life. The author comes to the conclusion that the monopolies subjugate the entire national economy, it turns into "one gigantic combined enterprise under the leadership of financial kings ...". Bukharin believed that in such conditions the state merges with the monopolies and itself becomes a collective entrepreneur and owner. “The national economy is turning into one gigantic combined trust, the shareholders of which are financial groups and the state. We call such entities "state capitalist trusts." They, according to Bukharin, practically destroy the competition within countries, which is transferred to the international arena. In the course of the struggle of trusts in the world market, according to Bukharin, there should be a tendency towards the formation of a "general state trust," and world imperialist contradictions inevitably lead to wars and a proletarian revolution.

S Cohen believes that Bukharin accurately determined the trend of disappearance in the XX century. free enterprise and the growth of state interference in economic life.

V. I. Lenin in 1916-1917 criticized Bukharin's model of imperialism, noting that under capitalism free competition within the country does not disappear at all, and that Bukharin unreasonably denied the just nature of national wars under imperialism and the right of nations to self-determination. It should also be noted that in his work "Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1916), Lenin used the results of Bukharin's research, but came to less radical, more realistic conclusions. Bukharin's concept underestimated the democratic tendencies under capitalism and contained an orientation towards the advancement of demands only of a socialist nature.

In August 1916 Nikolai Ivanovich went to Copenhagen, and in early October he left Oslo for the USA. He was most likely annoyed by his disagreements with Lenin and decided to try to carry out party work overseas.

At the beginning of April 1917 Bukharin went to Russia via Japan and Siberia. In Chelyabinsk he was detained by the Mensheviks for agitation among the soldiers. Only at the beginning of May did Nikolai Ivanovich arrive in Moscow.

Bukharin and the Russian revolutions. His role in the implementation of the policy of War Communism

In Moscow, Bukharin found himself in the midst of revolutionary events. He became a member of the MK, the executive committee of the Moscow Council and the city duma. Bukharin also enjoyed great influence in the regional bureau of the RSDLP (6).

In May 1917, in a number of articles, Bukharin spoke out in favor of an immediate solution to the questions of peace, bread and land, and resolutely condemned the policy of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and the Provisional Government. On May 20, 1917, Bukharin's programmatic article "The Russian Revolution and Its Fates" appeared in Spartak. It clearly set out the tasks of transferring power into the hands of the Soviets and creating a lasting alliance between the working class and the poorest peasantry. The article reflects the radicalism of Bukharin, who called for a world revolution and asserted that only "the firm revolutionary power of the proletariat, its iron dictatorship" can solve the country's pressing problems.

In May - June 1917 Nikolai Ivanovich was one of the organizers of the strikes of the Moscow proletariat against the June offensive at the front. On June 12, Bukharin made a report to the Moscow Council. He called for the transfer of power to revolutionary democracy, the end of the war, the elimination of state debts, the introduction of "merciless" taxes on the propertied citizens, the creation of an apparatus for managing the economy in cities and villages (factory committees, household committees, food committees).

At the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) in late July - early August 1917, Bukharin delivered a report on the international situation. It reflected the leftist views of a certain part of the party, as well as some unrealistic, utopian attitudes of the leadership of the RSDLP (b). The entire party, to a large extent, found itself gripped by the illusion of an imminent European and world revolution and, consequently, the imminent end of capitalism.

In assessing the prospects and course of the world revolution, Bukharin was even more to the left of Lenin. Thus, at the VI Congress of the Party, he put forward a provision on the need (after the victory of the proletarian revolution in Russia) to declare a "revolutionary war" to the West and to provide armed assistance to the proletariat of other countries. If Russia does not have enough strength, "then we will wage a revolutionary defensive war ... With such a revolutionary war we will kindle the fire of the world socialist revolution." This apparent political adventurism was supported by the Congress.

Bukharin's views on the role of the peasantry in the revolution were even more "leftist". At its first stage, he believed, the peasantry, having received land, would support the Bolsheviks, but at the second stage of the revolution they would oppose the proletariat. Then the proletarians of the West will become the ally of the Russian workers.

At the congress Bukharin occupied an intermediate position between supporters and opponents of the withdrawal of the slogan "All power to the Soviets!" He was elected to the editorial committee, which worked out the most important resolutions. The congress, having withdrawn the slogan "All power to the Soviets," took a course towards preparing an armed uprising. On behalf of the VI Congress, Bukharin wrote the Manifesto of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. He was also elected a member of the Central Committee of the party.

At the historic meetings of the Central Committee on October 10 and 16, 1917, which took concrete measures to carry out the uprising in Petrograd, Bukharin was not present, but fully supported Lenin's position. Therefore, he became an active participant in the preparation of the armed uprising of the Bolsheviks in Moscow. From the beginning of September 1917, after the failure of the Kornilov revolt, the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Moscow Soviet. On October 19, the Soviet adopted a resolution establishing workers' control in factories and plants. In Sotsial-Democrat, Bukharin assessed this event as "a step that must lead the Soviets to a direct struggle for power on an all-Russian scale."

November, the revolution won in Moscow. Bukharin wrote "The Manifesto of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Moscow Soviets of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies to all the citizens of Moscow," which noted that "the Moscow victory consolidates the world-historic victory of the Petersburg proletariat and the garrison." On November 6, at a meeting of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, he made a speech on the course of the revolution in Moscow. The speaker dwelled on the reasons for the protraction of the uprising (the indecision of the Revolutionary Revolutionary Committee, the treacherous tactics of the Mensheviks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc.). He also sharply criticized members of the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars - A.I. Rykov, V.P. Nogin, A.G. Shlyapnikov, G.E. Zinoviev, S.S. concessions to the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in order to form a coalition government. Bukharin called them deserters and declared that the time for "slobbering power has passed." This position of Nikolai Ivanovich completely coincided with Lenin's.

Bukharin occupied himself on many problems in 1917-1920. the most "leftist" positions.

After the revolution, Lenin instructed Bukharin to draw up a plan for the nationalization of the means of production and the creation of a body for the management of the national economy. At the suggestion of Bukharin, the Supreme Council of the National Economy was formed in December 1917. Until the spring of 1918, Bukharin's supporters occupied decisive positions in his leadership. Lenin insisted that Nikolai Ivanovich concentrate on solving economic problems, but on November 29 the Central Committee sent Bukharin to work as editor of Pravda.

Lenin in his work "The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power" outlined the ways to restore the economy, advocated the development of the sector of state capitalism. Bukharin and other "left communists" objected to the very term "state capitalism" and advocated early nationalization, intransigence towards private capital, nationalization, intransigence towards private capital, the creation of communes, etc. Bukharin did not consider it necessary for the new government to use bourgeois specialists and tsarist officers. This was typical, according to Lenin, petty-bourgeois revolutionism and "left-wing stupidity".

In May 1918, Bukharin's pamphlet "The Program of the Communists (Bolsheviks)" was published. At this time, the party began to turn towards "war communism" and toughened repression.

Bukharin at this time withdrew from the extreme "left communists" of the Osinsky type and made peace with Lenin. On May 26, 1918, on behalf of the Central Committee, he spoke at the congress of economic councils. On June 4, Lenin instructed Bukharin to conduct trade negotiations in Berlin; in July, Nikolai Ivanovich already worked on the presidium of the V Congress of Soviets. In October, he officially admitted the erroneousness of his position during the period of the Brest negotiations, and on October 2 the Central Committee was again approved by the Central Committee for the post of executive editor of Pravda.

At the 1st Congress of the Comintern on March 2-6, 1919, Bukharin made a presentation on the theoretical platform of the Comintern. He was a member of the Soviet delegation (Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Stalin) and, together with the German delegate G. Eberlein, wrote the Manifesto of the Communist International. It expressed confidence that the salvation of capitalism was not foreseen, and mankind was faced with an alternative - the destruction of all civilization or the organization of a socialist society. At the congress Bukharin was elected a member of the Executive Committee of the Comintern and deputy chairman of its bureau.

Following the congress, in March 1919, the VIII Congress of the CPSU (b) was held. At it, Nikolai Ivanovich reported on the development of the party program, in the commission for the preparation of which he was a member. Lenin opposed Bukharin's theses about the automatic collapse of capitalism and the existence of imperialism in the form of an independent formation, not a superstructure over capitalism. Lenin did not accept Bukharin's position on the self-determination of only the working classes of the nation, and not the entire nation. Bukharin's attempt to see in the trade unions only production management bodies was rejected.

In 1919, Nikolai Ivanovich wrote The ABC of Communism, which became known throughout the world as one of the classic documents of the period of War Communism.

In the ABC, civil war was presented as the only way to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. The possibility of a peaceful revolution was denied. The bright hopes for a saving world revolution were again expressed. The idea of a way out of the crisis for capitalism was not even allowed. "Therefore, now something one of two things is possible: either general decomposition, complete chaos, bloody mess, further savagery, disorder and real anarchy, or communism."

Within the country, according to the "Azbuka", a course was outlined for the transition to communism through the nationalization of industry, the elimination of trade, the organization of consumer communes. In the countryside, the kulak, as an agent of world capital, was to be eliminated; the poor went over to artel or communal cultivation of the land. “Every poor man should become a commune. Every communard is a communist, ”declared the“ Azbuka ”.

In the ABC of Communism, Bukharin nevertheless expressed some ideas that were rational for that time. For example, the nationalization of small property should be carried out gradually; at first, small trade will remain. It was suggested that the commodity economy will exist for some time, and then a period of "dying money circulation" will come.

Bukharin was in fact a supporter of the complete suppression of democracy within the country. “The world revolution is underway. A dictatorship of the armed proletariat is needed. "

In 1920, Bukharin still adhered to leftist views. This is evident from his speeches in March 1920 at the IX Congress of the RCP (B) and in the summer of the same year at the II Congress of the Comintern. In May 1920, his work "The Economy of the Transition Period" was published. It was another ode to military communism, a theoretical justification for the introduction of labor conscription, strict discipline, labor armies. Bukharin believed that under the dictatorship of the proletariat the concept of a commodity is lost, the law of value, money, etc., disappear. From this it followed that objective economic laws could be ignored and violent. The military proletarian dictatorship creates, according to Bukharin, "a type of proletarian militarized production" and is fighting against the "commodity-anarchist tendencies of the peasantry." In essence, the peasantry was declared a warrior to death, since, they say, the proletariat and the peasantry were "class carriers of various economic types." Violence was used even against the poor peasants of the countryside, for they too resisted the introduction of the grain monopoly and requisitions. Small private capital was to disappear in the cities. Bukharin rejected the legitimacy of using the very term "state capitalism".

Any material interest of production workers was essentially ignored. Bukharin came, in our opinion, to the correct, but very harsh conclusion: "Under the system of the proletarian dictatorship, the" worker "receives a social-labor ration, not wages."

Bukharin's activities during the NEP years

The transition to the New Economic Policy was not easy for Bukharin. Back in the discussion of trade unions in late 1920 and early 1921, he adhered to essentially old approaches to production management. In the discussion about trade unions, Bukharin's supporters tried to reconcile Lenin and Trotsky. Bukharin's "buffer" group (Preobrazhensky, Larin, Sokolnikov) tried to assign the trade unions the role of a school of communism, a defender of the interests of workers and present them as " component part the economic apparatus, the apparatus of state power in general ”. This was an intermediate position between the Leninist platform and Trotsky's thesis about "nationalization", that is, the takeover of trade unions by the state. At the same time, Bukharin advocated the development of "industrial and workers' democracy." Lenin sharply criticized both of these concepts, considering them eclectic and inappropriate. In his opinion, industrial democracy led to syndicalism, and "workers" did not correspond to the workers 'and peasants' character of the Soviet state. During the period of the trade union discussion, Lenin criticized Bukharin even more sharply than Trotsky. At the 10th Party Congress in March 1921, Lenin's position on the trade union issue won.

By the decision of the X Congress of the RCP (b), the implementation of the NEP began, which opened up a completely different perspective for social transformations in the country.

Bukharin fully supported Lenin's new concept of building socialism - NEP. At the X Congress, he stressed that the fate of the country "hangs in the balance", an economic link between town and country is needed. In his work "The New Course of Economic Policy" Nikolai Ivanovich outlined the essence of NEP as a strategic operation of the proletariat on the "economic front". Bukharin believed that after the state received money from the market turnover for the creation of large-scale industry, it would be possible to "turn the wheel in the other direction" against the private owner.

At the end of 1921 -1922. Bukharin developed some important theoretical problems within the framework of the NEP. In his article "Bourgeois Revolution and Proletarian Revolution" he for the first time formulated the conclusion about the possibility of degeneration of the Soviet regime, its bureaucratization by means of the fact that "cadre workers can ... become the embryo of a new ruling class." The chances of the formation of this exploiting class under the conditions of NEP, the country's backwardness and a hostile environment, in Bukharin's opinion, was becoming quite real.

In the same period, he comes to the conclusion that socialism in the country will be built in an atmosphere of "civil peace". Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, Bukharin noted at the IV Congress of the Comintern in 1922, a process of "growing into socialism" will be observed. He clearly outlined this concept in 1923: "We will slowly grow into socialism for many decades: through the growth of our industry, through cooperation, through the growing influence of our banking system ..."

In an acute factional struggle for power in 1922-1923. At first Bukharin tried to take an independent position. He felt acutely that after Lenin's illness a threat to the unity of the party had been created. Bukharin condemned Stalin and Dzerzhinsky for their support of Great Russian chauvinism during the consideration of the "Georgian case" and Stalin's theses on "autonomization" on the national question.

Nikolai Ivanovich was the only person from the party leadership who was present at the dying Lenin on January 21, 1924. He was deeply worried about Lenin's death.

February 1924 Bukharin delivered a brilliant lecture "Lenin as a Marxist" at the Communist Academy. In it, he gave a new assessment of Leninism. Bukharin concluded that Leninism is broader than Marxism in terms of its set of ideas, but in methodology it is a return to Marx. Therefore, he pointed out the fallacy of the slogan at the Institute of Red Professors: "Marxism in science, Leninism in tactics." The speaker revealed Lenin's contribution to the theory of imperialism, the elaboration of the national question, the doctrine of Soviet power, the alliance of the working class and the peasantry, etc.

The innovation of the report consisted in the fact that the author outlined a range of problems, the development of which was left to the party by Lenin. Bukharin included the doctrine of growing into socialism, the thesis about the evolutionary path of building a new society, the question of various types of socialism, the concept of a two-class society under the dictatorship of the proletariat, the problem of the possibility of the degeneration of the working class and the emergence of a new bureaucratic class. As if anticipating the Stalinist "revolution from above" in 1929-1933, the speaker emphasized that any opposition to the evolutionary line of building socialism is a counter-revolution.

Based on the last articles of Lenin, Bukharin in 1924-1925. substantiated the concept of agrarian-cooperative socialism, which was an alternative to the emerging Stalinism. He made an analysis of the country's economic development and urged, after overcoming the "scissors" of 1923 and creating a hard currency, to adapt to the "peasant market", to enable the peasantry to accumulate funds by developing cooperation, lowering prices for industrial goods and raising them for bread. In the political field, Bukharin called for a transition to a "system of Soviet legality."

On the eve of the XIV Conference of the RCP (b), on April 17, 1925, at a meeting of the Moscow party activists at the Bolshoi Theater, Bukharin delivered his historic report "On the New Economic Policy and Our Tasks." He outlined the situation in the countryside and admitted that the peasantry was dissatisfied with the remnants of "war communism" and the containment of NEP. The speaker noted that there is no need to be afraid to expand the system of hired labor and rent, when the commanding heights of the economy are in the hands of the state. "We are too assiduously stepping on the feet of the well-to-do peasant." Even the kulak of Soviet power is useful, argued Nikolai Ivanovich, because the kulak, exploiting the poor and becoming richer, makes its own contributions to banks, and the Soviet government from these deposits credits the middle peasants and the poor. “We are helping him (the kulak), but he is helping us too. In the end, maybe the grandson of the kulak will thank us for doing this to him, ”Bukharin said. He sharply opposed the intention to arrange a "St. Bartholomew's night", a "second revolution" for the kulak, to expropriate him. "I think this is theoretically wrong, but practically pointless." The speaker sharply opposed the overestimation of the role of the collective farms, saying that they are not a "pillar road" to socialism for the peasants. And then he uttered a phrase that expressed the essence of Bukharinism, and for which he was then constantly criticized: “In general, the whole peasantry, all its strata must be told: enrich yourself, accumulate, develop your economy. Only idiots can say that we should always have poor people. "

Bukharin's report displeased many party leaders. Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky turned the slogan "get rich" into a real bogeyman, presenting Bukharin as the ideologue of the kulaks. The opposition called him "the kulak dad", "Pushkin NEP" (Zinoviev). Stalin was also dissatisfied with this attitude. He actively opposed Bukharin's statement and, together with his supporters, forced him three times (until the end of 1925) to declare the fallacy of his slogan.

After the party conference, Bukharin spoke at a meeting of the MK RCP (b), summarizing his concept. He showed that there were almost no old kulaks left in the countryside, a new type of kulak would represent "the embryo of a well-to-do capitalist or semi-capitalist peasant farmer." It was him that Nikolai Ivanovich proposed to actively involve in the process of socialist construction. The basis of cooperation in the countryside was made up of middle and poor peasants.

In his article "Some Questions of Economic Policy" (1925) Bukharin presented the development of cooperation in the countryside as the realization of the populist plans of cooperative socialism, but only in new conditions. Bukharin pointed out that the peasantry will come to socialism through market relations.

In the article "Blow towards socialism and the workers 'and peasants' question" Nikolai Ivanovich again emphasized the relevance of cooperation and the market in the countryside, civil peace in the country. He urged not to be afraid of the village bourgeoisie, since the commanding heights in the economy are in the hands of the "proletarian city". In 1925 Bukharin said that socialism in a peasant country would be backward, it would have to be built slowly, "at a snail's pace." The final victory of socialism was associated only with the victory of the world revolution in other countries.

Bukharin's concept also touched upon the problems of industrialization. He believed that there were three sources of accumulation for the development of industry - the income of the industrial sector, taxes levied on private capital, and the personal savings of the population, including the cooperative peasantry.

Bukharin's theoretical development of the model of agrarian-cooperative socialism did not remain outside of social practice. The XIV Party Conference approved the new agrarian policy of the Party. The peasantry was provided with significant benefits and opportunities for the development of the economy. In the countryside, hired labor was legalized, taxes were reduced, the prices for grain were slightly increased, the terms for leasing land were increased, and obstacles to free trade were removed. The cooperative movement and the activity of the Soviets in the countryside revived. The country's economy began to grow rapidly. This fact cannot be disputed by anyone, and it confirms the vitality of the foundations of Bukharin's model of social development.

In June 1925, Stalin opposed Bukharin's thesis about the "enrichment" of the peasants and spoke in favor of the possibility of repressive measures against the kulak. The Central Committee of the party ordered Bukharin to withdraw his slogan and admit his mistake. Bukharin himself said: "The Central Committee then declared that this was wrong, and I made repeated statements about my mistake." Before the XIV Congress of the CPSU (b), Bukharin was forced to publicly repent. On December 13, 1925, Pravda published his statement about the fallacy of the slogan “get rich”. The last phrase of the document says that inwardly Nikolai Ivanovich was confident in the correctness of his policy. He only submitted to party discipline: "Under all conditions and at any time, I will not allow myself to go beyond the framework of those decisions that are made by our highest party bodies."

Thus, Bukharin at the end of 1925 lost the first major battle with Stalin. It was at the turn of 1925/1926. Bukharinism was mainly defeated in the CPSU (b). Later, until the spring of 1928, Bukharin made one concession after another to Stalin, and yet the contradictions between them grew into a sharp and open struggle.

In December 1925, at the XIV Congress of the CPSU (b) (after the forced admission of his mistake in Pravda), Bukharin's departure from the concept of socialism that he had developed was noticeable. He emphasized the danger of the kulak, proposing, however, to fight it only by economic methods.

October 1927, speaking in Leningrad, he noted that NEP had brought great benefits to the country in 2 years, but a real kulak danger had appeared. The party succeeded: to isolate the kulak from the middle peasant, the moment came to attack private capital. “Having fed up even a little, one could think of an attack on this private trader, whom we ourselves called for,” Bukharin said.

Bukharin's "sunset" as a politician

In 1928, NEP in the USSR was basically liquidated. In addition to the confiscation of grain, the destruction of the grain market in the village, new taxes were established. The peasantry responded with stubborn resistance.

Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky and Uglanov opposed the long-term bet on emergency measures, the planting of collective farms, and for the preservation of NEP. They were for the gradual collectivization and encouragement of the development of peasant farms, against the transfer of fixed assets for the needs of industrialization. At the same time, their mistake was the belief that the growing layer of kulaks allegedly already posed a threat to Soviet power. They suggested using economic measures of influence against the kulaks.

April 1928 Bukharin reported at a meeting of the Leningrad party activists on the lessons of grain procurement, the Shakhty business and the tasks of the party. He approved the use of emergency measures at the beginning of 1928, but condemned the repression, executions and slipping on the "food appropriation rails" in the countryside.

The continuation of emergency measures against the peasantry led in May - June 1928 to a confrontation "between Stalin and Bukharin. The latter, in a note to the Politburo on May 17, 1928, spoke out against hasty collectivization, because it was inconceivable without savings, since agriculture needed technology.

In June 1928, M. Frumkin, Deputy People's Commissar for Finance, sent a letter to the Politburo in which he outlined the alarming situation in the countryside as a result of Stalin's policies. It was decided to familiarize the members of the Central Committee with this document and give a collective answer. But Stalin ignored the decision of the Politburo and answered personally through the Secretariat. Bukharin was outraged by the arbitrariness of the secretary general.

At the July 1928 Plenum, Stalin and Bukharin made keynote speeches. Stalin outlined his notorious theory of the exacerbation of the class struggle as socialism was being built and the need for the peasantry to pay "tribute" for the needs of industrialization. Although the plenum decided to end the emergency campaign and partially raise purchase prices, Stalin did not feel stubborn resistance to his policies. After the plenum, he began to liquidate the main centers of support of the Bukharin group of "rightists".

September in Pravda, Bukharin published Notes of an Economist, which unequivocally criticized the theory of "tribute" from the peasantry, the intention to solve economic problems by means of "big leaps". Stalin obtained (by poll) from members of the Politburo the condemnation of this article.

At the end of November 1928, in the speech of Nikolai Ivanovich at a meeting of worker-agricultural workers, new shades of his political attitudes appeared. Yielding to Stalin, he spoke in favor of accelerating the creation of collective farms and state farms and suppressing the kulak, which in some areas "grabbed a gun." At the same time, the report defended the interests of the individual owner in the countryside.

When it became known about the meeting between Bukharin and Kamenev in July 1928, Stalin decided to crack down on the "rightists" in the Politburo. At a meeting of the Politburo on January 30, 1929, Bukharin and his supporters were accused of "crimes" against the party and blocking with the Trotskyists. Nikolai Ivanovich acknowledged the fact of meeting with Kamenev, but rejected allegations of her anti-party character. He blamed Stalin for the desire for military-feudal exploitation of the peasantry, the growth of bureaucracy, the disintegration of the Comintern and actually demanded the resignation of the secretary general. After the work of the special commission on February 9, the Politburo condemned Bukharin's behavior and policies and reprimanded him. The applications of Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky about their resignation were rejected. At the same time, the protest of Bukharin and his group against the expulsion of Trotsky from the USSR was not taken into account. Both sides began to prepare for a fight at the April plenum of the Central Committee. Bukharin's speech on April 18, 1929 at the plenum of the Party Central Committee was an act of great courage. Of the 302 people who sat at the plenum, only 10 were Bukharin's supporters. The atmosphere was hostile, insults were heard against Nikolai Ivanovich. He immediately stated that this was a massacre, a "civil execution." The disadvantage of his position was the willingness to accept any decision of the Central Committee and the desire to avoid the emergence of a new opposition in the party. But he attacked Stalin sharply for trying to intensify the exploitation of the countryside. “Lenin has nothing like the Stalinist tribute from the peasants. The proletariat is not and cannot be the exploiter of the peasantry. Please remove your "tribute", if only as a slip of the tongue! Don't mention it! Do not pretend to be sinless Roman popes! ”Bukharin urged Stalin. He also sharply criticized the theory of exacerbation of the class struggle, according to which, according to Stalin's logic, at the moment of the victory of socialism, a civil war was to break out.

Nikolai Ivanovich again drew attention to Lenin's testament and called for preserving NEP, regulated market relations, combining collective-farm and state farm construction with the rise of middle-poor peasant farms, and observing revolutionary legality.

Stalin in his four-hour speech "On the Right Deviation in the CPSU (b)" tried to politically destroy Bukharin. "Right deviators" were called the most unpleasant factional group in the history of the party, and Bukharin - a shameless politician, worthless, liberal, who in 1918 wanted to arrest Lenin and carry out a coup.

The April plenum of the Central Committee condemned the right deviation in the party and removed Bukharin from his posts in Pravda and the Comintern. The decisions of the plenum were not made public. In April-May 1929 Bukharin was still elected to the presidium of the 16th Party Conference and took part in the work of the 5th Congress of Soviets.

February 1930 Pravda published Bukharin's article The Great Reconstruction. The author defined the beginning stage of complete collectivization as the phase of the "anti-kulak revolution". Stalin did not like this definition, in his opinion, it narrowed the essence of agrarian reforms. In this article, Bukharin was able to show that the policy of the party leadership is becoming ill-considered, the revolution in the countryside began under conditions of a grain crisis and emergency measures. At the same time, he urged to talk to the kulak with the "language of lead", to continue the "anti-kulak revolution", to create gigantic state farms. Bukharin's next work, "Financial Capital in the Robe of the Pope," was a vivid pamphlet on dictatorship of all kinds, inquisition and violence. Meaning Stalin, the author wrote that blood, filth and forgery stood at the origins of the pope's power, and his inquisition raised "ideological prostitution and unprincipled sycophancy to the heights of an ideological principle."

The summer of 1930 was very difficult for Nikolai Ivanovich. He was to repent at the 16th Congress of the CPSU (b). And this was especially painful because after a trip to Ukraine, where Bukharin gave all his money to hungry children, he was personally convinced of how disastrous collectivization turned out to be for the countryside. Upon arrival in Moscow, in a conversation with Larin, he said: "If more than ten years after the revolution one can observe such a thing, so why did it happen."

In fact, Bukharin boycotted the 16th Congress without bowing his head to Stalin, which was not easy for him. He has grown older, has become less sociable. His tenacity was admired by many. One of the notes in the "Socialist Bulletin" said: "The communists, even the Stalinists, in private conversations with a kind of hidden pride talk about the principled firmness of Bukharin." At the congress he was again elected a member of the Central Committee. Stalin could not stand this. Under his pressure, Nikolai Ivanovich wrote a statement to the party's Central Committee, published in Pravda on November 20, 1930. In general terms, without mentioning the leader, he spoke out for the unity of the CPSU (b) and support for its political course. The statement did not contain any indication of the danger of "kulak agents in the party" - therefore, Trud and other newspapers again criticized the "penitent", attributing to him malicious intent against the leadership of the party. This time Stalin suspended the newspaper campaign against Bukharin.

Bukharin's rather active social activities in 1933-1935. was explained by his open "repentance" at the January Joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Committee of the Central Committee of 1933. He approved the results of the five-year plan and called for rallying around Stalin, "this energetic iron figure." In the same spirit, Bukharin spoke at the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in early 1934. He was elected a candidate by the members of the Central Committee, and on February 27, he was appointed executive editor of Izvestia. Heading the newspaper (until January 16, 1937), Nikolai Ivanovich tried, along with praising Stalin's merits (as the situation demanded, otherwise he would become an outcast again) to promote the ideas of socialist humanism and the need for an active struggle against fascism.

NI Bukharin made a great contribution to the development of the 1936 Constitution by preparing its legal part. Since February 1935, Nikolai Ivanovich worked as a member of the constitutional commission. It should be noted that he wrote about the progressiveness of bourgeois democracy in comparison with fascism. However, at the same time, Soviet democracy was made absolutized, allegedly having no equal.

Notable is his article "Overturned Norms" in Izvestia for January 1, 1936. The author declared that socialism in the country had become full-blooded, the springs of social wealth were clogged, a leap was made in rapprochement between town and country, etc. After the destruction of the kulaks and collectivization , he argued, the country in the field of agriculture can overtake the advanced countries of the West, moreover, it is already beginning to "overlap them." There is no doubt that Bukharin, willingly or unwillingly, contributed to the creation of the cult of Stalin and the development of socio-political concepts of the country's development inadequate to reality.

The assassination of Kirov in December 1934 shocked Nikolai Ivanovich. Stalin dealt a decisive blow to the moderate wing of the Politburo (Kirov, Ordzhonikidze, Kalinin). Bukharin understood that this meant a weakening of his positions and a real threat of physical violence against him. But the leader of the party still maintained good relations with Bukharin.

The odious Moscow trials of 1936-1938, the trial of representatives of the Leninist guard could not bypass Bukharin. On February 10, 1936, Pravda published an article "On a rotten concept." Most likely Stalin was its author. It gave a sharp rebuff to Bukharin's assertion that in Russia until 1917 "the Oblomov nation was dominant" (Izvestia, January 21, 1936). On the whole, the opponent tried to discredit Bukharin. And he gave him, in an orderly tone, advice to correct his concept "in the shortest possible time and with the necessary clarity."

August 1936 Bukharin learned of the death sentence for Zinoviev and Kamenev. He sent a telegram to Stalin with a request to postpone their execution and flew to Moscow, realizing that his turn would soon come, especially since at the trial testimony was also given about Bukharin's "sabotage" activities. The investigation against him ended in September 1936, but it was clear that this was only a postponement. At the December Plenum of the Central Committee, Yezhov accused Bukharin of sabotage and espionage. Stalin recommended a more thorough understanding of the case. Bukharin tried to remind him of his services to the party. Stalin replied that Trotsky had them too. Bukharin failed to convince the merciless Stalin. “You want to throw us into the dirty dustbin of history? Come to your senses, Koba! ”- he begged Stalin.

In January 1937, in connection with the trial of Pyatakov, Radek, Sokolnikov and others, Bukharin began to receive materials of the "confessions" of the defendants, directed against the former leaders of the "right". Nikolai Ivanovich went on a hunger strike. In the meantime, Stalin was already working out a scenario of reprisals against Bukharin and Rykov at the February-March 1937 plenum.

The plenary session discussed the report of Yezhov and Mikoyan “The Case of Comrades. Bukharin and Rykov ". They were accused of seeking to produce " palace coup"In the country, to dismember the USSR, terrorism, etc. The members of the commission, which included Stalin, Yezhov, Khrushchev, Kaganovich and others, made various proposals. Postyshev spoke out for bringing Bukharin to trial without being shot. Yezhov advocated immediate execution. Stalin decided to send the case to the NKVD. The commission agreed with this. The plenum expelled Bukharin and Rykov from the party. Bukharin spoke at the plenum three times. He denied all accusations, only apologized for the mistake he had made - a political hunger strike. On February 26, his last speech was interrupted. “Okay, plant it. Do you think that because you shout - to put in jail - I will speak differently? " - concluded Bukharin.

In Stalin's dungeons Bukharin behaved courageously, wrote a book (according to A. M. Larina) "Degradation of culture under fascism." However, threats to kill his family and relatives, blackmail and psychological terror weakened Bukharin's will. He recognized himself as an active participant and leader of the "anti-Soviet right-Trotskyist counter-revolutionary bloc." However, he categorically rejected accusations of attempts to kill Lenin, Kirov, high treason, espionage.

March 1938 in the House of Unions began the trial of Bukharin, Rykov and others. In the official accusation, it was argued that the defendants sought to restore capitalism, dismember the USSR, kill Stalin and other party leaders, that they worked in close connection with foreign intelligence services and Trotsky. Bukharin made it clear during the trial that he was succumbing to gross violence, that the confession of the accused was in accordance with medieval legal principles.

In March 1938, a harsh sentence was read. On March 15, Stalin's executioners shot Bukharin. His first wife, N.M. Lukina, died in the camp. The rest of the relatives experienced the horrors of Soviet concentration camps and the persecution by the authorities.

A. M. Larina and her son fought for a long time for the complete Rehabilitation of Bukharin, which took place only in 1988. In a letter to "The Future Generation of Party Leaders," Bukharin expressed confidence that the court of history would restore his good name.

Conclusion

The most promising line in the history of Bolshevism was personified, in my opinion, by Rykov and Bukharin in the mid-1920s. "Right Bolshevism", under certain circumstances, could more adequately reflect the needs of the country's development. A multi-party system, the preservation of democratic institutions, and a coalition government would pave the way for the establishment of a democratic system in Russia.

In 1926-1927, as part of the program of the offensive against the kulak, measures were taken in the USSR to actually curtail NEP. The rejection of classical Bukharinism, the model of socialism that Bukharin developed in 1925, meant a departure from the most effective and real way of building socialism. Having abandoned the services of a private owner, the all-round development of the kulak and middle-peasant-poor cooperatives and proceeding to the administrative replacement of them by collective and state farms (which happened in 1929-1933), it was absolutely impossible to create a society that would meet the basic criteria of socialism.

In general, it can be concluded that the defeat of Bukharin's rryppa in 1928-1929 is inevitable. And not only because by this time Stalinism had established itself in the party. Bukharin himself, while absolutizing the principle of party unity or rather its Central Committee, did not address a wide audience, did not try to appeal to the people. He was not a stubborn political fighter capable (like Lenin) of turning the tide of events and defending his position. Bukharin actually lost already at the end of 1925, when, under pressure from the Central Committee and Stalin, he was forced to revise his concept of building socialism.

Of great interest are Bukharin's thoughts in the mid-1930s on the need for political pluralism and on the struggle against reaction and fascism on the basis of "new humanism," that is, universal human values.

While noting Bukharin's merits, one cannot ignore his mistakes, which were expressed in the "leftism" of views and politics at certain periods of their lives. Overestimation of the class approach, essentially ignorance of universal and democratic values, belief in the world revolution, reliance on violence as a means of solving social problems caused enormous damage to the development of the country and the party itself. Stalinism absorbed the most "left" and negative features of Bukharinism.

It should be noted here that the figure of Bukharin himself is contradictory. His principled position at times gave way to explicit compromise, first with Lenin, and then with Stalin. On the whole, it is obvious that Bukharin, undoubtedly being one of the outstanding leaders of the Bolshevik Party, has absorbed all the obvious shortcomings of this political force.

So, on the one hand, Bukharin was indeed a fairly strong theorist, primarily an economist, who was capable of much, which was proved by his theoretical activity during the NEP. On the other hand, his views constantly changed within the framework of Bolshevism from the extreme left to the extreme right, and this does not mean that Bukharin was a principled theoretician.

And as a politician, Bukharin could not important points to defend their views, but went "on the lead" of their associates in the Bolshevik Party, which led on a global scale to serious mistakes.

Of course, these shortcomings could only be attributed to the personality of Bukharin himself, but, in my opinion, the reason is much deeper and lies in the very idea of Bolshevism and the structure of the Bolshevik party.

So "juggling" political theories depending on the historical moment and momentary interests, the lack of adherence to principles was characteristic of the Bolshevik party as a whole. Examples of this are the copying of the Socialist-Revolutionary agrarian program after the October Revolution, the transition from war communism to the NEP and from the NEP to collectivization and industrialization.

And the Caesarism inherent in the Bolshevik party and the impossibility of factions and criticism within the framework of this organization just led to tragedies similar to Bukharin's.

List of sources used

Bordyugov G., Kozlov V. Nikolay Bukharin: Episodes of political biography // Communist. 1988. No. 13. S. 98-110.

Bukharin: Man, politician, scientist. - M., 1990 .-- 156s.

Bukharin N. Economist's Notes: Towards the Beginning of a New Economic Year: Party Leadership of Economic Processes // Political Economy. - 2000 .-- No. 1.- P.65-71.

Bukharin N.I. Autobiography. Figures of the USSR and the October Revolution. - M., 1992 .-- 66p.

G.A. Kosmach The tragedy of the idols of the revolution: Pages of the political biography of N.I.Bukharin, A.I. Rykov, L.D. Trotsky. - Minsk: Universitetskae, 1994 - 192s.

Cohen S. Bukharin: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 / Translated from English by E. Chetvergova and others - M.: Progress., 1992 .-- 571p.

Martynak I. P. Nekalki epizodak z zhytstsya "enemy of the people" Bukharin // Vestsi Bel. dzyarzh. ped. un-that. - 1999 .-- N 2.- P.118-123.

R.A. Medvedev They surrounded Stalin. - M., 1990 .-- 243p.

Piyashev N.F. The Great Passion-Bearer: On the Centenary of the Birth of N.I. Bukharin and on the Sixtieth Anniversary of His Death. - M., 1998 .-- 354s.

Lostyaiko Ya.I. Bukharin: strokes for a political portrait. Kiev. 1988 .-- 64p.

Felshtinsky Yu.G. Conversations with Bukharin: Commentary on the memoirs of A.M. Larina (Bukharina). - M., 1993.25s.

A. V. Shubin Leaders and conspirators. M .: Veche, 2004 .-- 432s.

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Nikolay Ivanovich Bukharin
Nikolay Ivanovich Bukharin
Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) June 2, 1924 - November 17, 1929
Candidate member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) March 25, 1919 - May 23, 1924
Birth: September 27 (October 9) 1888 Moscow, Russian empire
Death: March 15, 1938 Kommunarka, Leninsky District, Moscow Region, RSFSR, USSR
Buried: "Kommunarka" shooting range
Party: RSDLP (since 1906)

Nikolay Ivanovich Bukharin(September 27 (October 9) 1888, Moscow, Russian Empire - March 15, 1938, Kommunarka, Leninsky District, Moscow Region, RSFSR, USSR) - Soviet political, statesman and party leader. Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) (1924-1929). Academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1929).

Nikolai Bukharin's activities before the revolution

Was born Nikolay Bukharin in the family of school teachers - Ivan Gavrilovich Bukharin(1862-1940) and Lyubov Ivanovna Izmailova (died 1915) from 1893 he lived in Chisinau, where his father worked as a tax inspector. He studied at the 1st Moscow gymnasium. After graduating from high school, he studied at the economics department of the law faculty of Moscow University (in 1911 he was expelled for participating in revolutionary activities).
During the 1905-1907 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. He was hiding in the apartment of V. M. Shulyatikov, waiting for documents. Then he illegally left for Hanover, and in the fall of 1912 for Austria-Hungary.
Abroad Bukharin met Lenin, with whom he subsequently maintained friendly relations. 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. In 1915 he moved to Stockholm through France and England. In Sweden he lived under the false name Moisha Dolgolevsky. According to the memoirs of Bukharin's wife A.M. Larina, he was called by the same name later, in conversations with her father Mikhail Lurie (Yuri Larin):

Until recently, when he came to his father, Nikolai Ivanovich called himself so. He rang at the door, before you can open it, you can already hear his infectious laugh: "Open, Moisha-Abe-Pinkus Dovgolevsky has come!"

Despite the fact that emigrants were forbidden to interfere in Swedish politics, he wrote for the Scandinavian left-wing newspapers and participated in the meeting of the emigrant club, which the Swedish police considered a front revolutionary organization. He was arrested on March 23, 1916 in an apartment on Salmetargatan, where he lived with two other Bolsheviks (Yuri Pyatakov and Yevgenia Bosh). At the police station, he called himself Moisha Dolgolevsky. After several weeks of imprisonment, in April 1916 he was exiled from Sweden to Norway, 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 newspaper "New World".
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. Lenin 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 into economism of the 1890s, associated with the inability to distinguish political issues from economic ones.

Nick. Yves. [ Bukharin] engaged in economics, and in this we have always supported him. But he is (1) gullible to gossip and (2) devilishly unstable in politics. - From a letter from Lenin to A.G. Shlyapnikov, 1916 (see: PSS Lenin, vol. 49, p. 194)

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 Chelyabinsk, he was arrested by the local authorities for agitation among soldiers and sailors.

Nikolai Bukharin's activities

Theorist and economist Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin

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 left 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. He prepared proposals for the nationalization of industry and the creation of economic management bodies headed by the Supreme Council of the 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 Socialist-Revolutionaries, opposed both the signing of peace with the Germans in Brest-Litovsk, and against the position the head of the Soviet delegation, Leon Trotsky, demanding the continuation of the line on the world proletarian revolution. Later, during a discussion initiated in 1923 by Trotsky on factions in the CPSU (b), he admitted that during the discussion of the Brest-Litovsk Peace, part of the Left Social Revolutionaries invited him to participate in the arrest of Lenin for 24 hours and the creation of a coalition socialist government from opponents of the 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. On September 25, 1919, Bukharin became a victim of a terrorist act: he was wounded by a bomb thrown by anarchist terrorists into the premises of the Moscow Committee of the RCP (b) in Leontievsky Lane. As a result of the explosion in Leontievsky lane, 12 people were killed, 55 were injured.
In May 1918, he published the widely known brochure "The Program of the Communists (Bolsheviks)", in which he theoretically substantiated the need for labor service for 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 book "The ABC of Communism", which subsequently went through more than 20 reprints. In May 1920 he wrote (partly in co-authorship 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"

In the "trade union discussion" 1920-1921 Bukharin held 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 the 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 popularly express 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 my observations of activity Bukharin Lenin gave her the following characterization, which later became widely known:
Bukharin not only the most valuable and outstanding theorist 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 fully understood dialectics).
- From "Letter to the Congress" by V. I. Lenin

At the first conference of Marxist-Leninist institutions in March 1928, M. Pokrovsky, in his introductory speech, named "two of the most remarkable works of social science" in the decade that has elapsed since the October Revolution: Lenin - "State and Revolution" and Bukharin - "Economy of the Transition Period ". "Bukharin," said Comrade Pokrovsky, "despite some unfulfilled predictions, has a number of basic ideas that in the field of political economy represent almost the same turn as Lenin's book State and Revolution in the field of law."

Nikolai Bukharin's activities

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 closest comrades of the leader. 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: "You and I, Bukharchik, the Himalayas, and all the rest are small spots" [(Bukharin belonged to the few top leaders of the party and country who addressed to 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!" from 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 (multi-structure economy) would gradually economically oust the individual economy, and the kulaks would not be subject to elimination as a class, but would gradually be equalized with the rest of the villagers. In the article “Notes of an Economist,” published in Pravda, Bukharin declared the only acceptable crisis-free development of the agrarian and industrial sector, and all other approaches (primarily Stalinist) - “adventurous”. This, however, ran counter to Stalin's course of universal collectivization and industrialization.

Bukharin in disgrace

Nikolai Bukharin's activities

A week later, the Politburo condemned Bukharin's speech, and he, in a polemic, in response to the General Secretary'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").
On January 30, 1929, N.I.Bukharin wrote a statement to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks about the fabrications spread about him. On February 9, 1929, N.I.Bukharin, A.I. Rykov and M.P. Tomsky sent a joint statement to the Joint Meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the Presidium of the Central Control Commission.

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. Stalin proposed to appoint Bukharin to the honorary, but extremely ungrateful post of People's Commissar of Education, but Bukharin himself asked to be given the quiet post of head of the Scientific and Technical Directorate of the Supreme Council of the National Economy. K.E. Voroshilov wrote on June 8, 1929 to G.K. Ordzhonikidze:
Bukharin begged everyone not to appoint him to the People's Commissariat for Education and suggested and then insisted on NTU. I supported him in this, supported by several more people, and by a majority of one vote (against Koba) we held it

On June 19, 1929, at the 10th plenum of the ECCI, Bukharin was removed from the post of a member of the Presidium of the ECCI, he was politically charged with the fact that he was "slipping into an opportunist denial of the fact that capitalist stabilization is increasingly shaking, which inevitably leads to a denial of the growth of a new upsurge of the revolutionary labor movement. ". 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 All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (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).

Nikolai Bukharin's activities

Manager and journalist. Bukharin and the intelligentsia

Bukharin was considered (along with Lenin, Trotsky 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. In everyday life he 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. In 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 a 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".

On January 12, 1929, he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR for social and economic sciences.

"Comrade Bukharin's candidacy stands less firmly (than Pokrovsky. - Approx.): Formally, the academicians refer to the" journalistic nature of his works, "but in essence, in their narrow circle, they express fears that the election of Comrade Bukharin as one of the leaders of the Comintern, "Can create any complications for the Academy in its international relations", "will drop its authority", etc. Proceeding from the fact that the Academy is unlikely to go to a political demonstration, which would be in this case a blackout of this candidacy, we can assume that Comrade Bukharin will be elected

Report to the Politburo in October 1928 by the Commission for Observing the Elections to the Academy of Sciences

Since 1930, Chairman of the Commission on the History of Knowledge (KIZ), since 1932 director of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, formed on the basis of KIZ, which ceased to exist in 1938. Bukharin promoted the theory of the possibility of a transition from the dictatorship of the proletariat to socialist humanism, thought about the revolution in science as a reflection of the revolution in society.

From 1934 to the second half of January 1937 he served as editor-in-chief of the Izvestia newspaper. In February 1936, the party was sent abroad to buy the archive of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels belonging to the German Social Democratic Party, which was taken to a number of European countries after the Nazis came to power in Germany.

This is a poet-songwriter of the old intelligentsia, which became the Soviet intelligentsia ... Pasternak is original ... This is his strength, because he is infinitely far from the template, stereotyped, rhymed prose ... Such is Boris Pasternak, one of the most wonderful masters of verse in our time, strung on the threads of his work not only a whole string of lyrical pearls, but also gave a series of deep sincerity of revolutionary things.

The party, however, soon dissociated itself from this speech. Bukharin took part in the posthumous campaign against Yesenin and "Yeseninism", his participation in it was largely determined by the internal party struggle with Trotsky (who spoke with positive assessments of Yesenin's work). In 1927, in the newspaper Pravda, Bukharin published an article called "Evil Notes", later published as a separate book, in which he wrote:

Subsequently, in a report at the first congress of Soviet writers, Bukharin spoke of Yesenin, "a ringing songwriter-guslar, a talented lyric poet", although critically, but much warmer, placing on a par with Blok and Bryusov as "old" poets who reflected the revolution in your creativity.

Nikolai Bukharin's activities

Bukharin was a cartoonist who captured many members of the Soviet elite. His cartoons of Stalin are considered the only portraits of the "leader" made from life, not from photographs.

Nikolai Bukharin's activities

Death
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". 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'm terribly glad that the dogs were shot. " But on September 10, 1936, Pravda reported that the USSR Prosecutor's Office had dropped the investigation against Bukharin and others.

The verdict in the Bukharin-Rykov-Yagoda case, March 1938
In January 1937, during the Second Moscow Trial, charges of conspiratorial activity were again brought against Bukharin, and he was confronted with the arrested Radek. In February 1937 he went on a hunger strike in protest against the charges against him of involvement in conspiratorial activities, but after Stalin said: "To whom are you giving an ultimatum, 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 internal 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.
To avoid any misunderstandings, I tell you from the very beginning that for the world (society) I am 1) not going to take anything back from what I have written; 2) I do not intend to ask you anything in this sense (and in connection with this), I do not want to beg for anything, which would bring the matter off the rails on which it is rolling. But for your personal information, I am writing. I cannot leave this life without writing these last lines to you, for I am overwhelmed with torment that you should know about.

1. Standing on the edge of an abyss from which there is no return, I give you my dying word of honor that I am innocent of the crimes that I confirmed during the investigation ...

... There is some big and bold political idea of a general cleansing a) in connection with the pre-war time, b) in connection with the transition to democracy. This purge captures a) the culprit, b) the suspicious, and c) the potentially suspicious. They couldn't do without me here. Some are neutralized in this way, others in a different way, and still others in a third way. A safety point is the fact that people inevitably talk about each other and forever distrust each other (I judge by myself: how angry I was at Radek, who ruffled me! And then he himself went this way ...). Thus, the management has a complete guarantee. For God's sake, don’t understand what I am secretly reproaching here, even in thinking with myself. I have grown so much out of baby diapers that I understand that big plans, big ideas and big interests overlap everything, and it would be petty to raise the question of your own person along with the world-historical tasks that lie primarily on your shoulders.

But here I have both the main torment and the main painful paradox. 5) If I was absolutely sure that you think so, then my soul would be much calmer. Well, what then! It is necessary, it is necessary. But believe me, my heart gushes with a hot stream of blood when I think that you can believe in my crimes and, deep down, you yourself think that I am really guilty of all the horrors. Then what comes out? That I myself am helping to lose a number of people (starting with myself!), That is, I am doing deliberate evil! Then it is not justified by anything. And everything gets confused in my head, and I want to scream at the scream and bang my head against the wall: after all, I am becoming the cause of the death of others. What to do? What to do?…

... 8) Let me finally pass on to my last small requests: a) it is easier for me to die a thousand times than to survive the upcoming process: I just do not know how I will cope with myself - you know my nature; I am not an enemy of either the Party or the USSR, and I will do everything in my power, but these forces in such an environment are minimal, and heavy feelings rise in my soul; I would, forgetting shame and pride, begging on my knees that this should not happen. But this is probably no longer possible, I would ask, if possible, to give me the opportunity to die before the trial, although I know how harsh you look at such questions; c) if a death sentence awaits me, then I ask you in advance, I conjure directly to everyone that is dear to you, to replace the execution with the fact that I myself will drink poison in the cell (give me morphine so that I fall asleep and do not wake up). For me, this point is extremely important, I do not know what words I have to find in order to plead for this, as for mercy: after all, politically it will not interfere with anything, and no one will even know this. But let me spend the last seconds the way I want. Have pity! Knowing me well, you will understand. I sometimes look with clear eyes in the face of death, just as I know well that I am capable of brave deeds. And sometimes the same I am so confused that nothing remains in me. So if I am destined to die, I ask for a morphine cup. I pray about it ... c) I ask you to let me say goodbye to my wife and son. The daughter does not need: it will be too bad for her, it will be hard, just like Nadya and her father. And Anyuta is young, she will survive, and I also want to say the last words to her. I would ask you to give me a meeting with her before the trial. The arguments are: if my family sees what I confessed, they could commit suicide from surprise. I must somehow prepare for this. It seems to me that this is in the interests of the case and in its official interpretation ...
- from Bukharin's letter to Stalin dated 10.12.37.

Bukharin was one of the main defendants (along with Rykov) at the trial in the case of the "Anti-Soviet Trotskyist bloc". Like almost all other defendants, he pleaded guilty and partly testified. In his last word, he made an attempt to refute the accusations raised against him. Although Bukharin nevertheless declared: "The monstrousness of my crimes is immeasurable," he did not directly confess in any particular episode.

Bukharin's literary and philosophical exercises are a screen behind which Bukharin tries to hide from his final exposure. Philosophy and espionage, philosophy and sabotage, philosophy and sabotage, philosophy and murder - as genius and villainy - two things are not combined! I do not know of other examples - this is the first example in history of how a spy and a murderer wields philosophy like crushed glass to powder his victim's eyes before smashing his head with a robber flail!
- A. Ya. Vyshinsky at the morning 11 March 1938 court session of the trial in the case of the Bukharin-Trotskyist bloc, op. according to the Judicial Report of the Bukharin-Trotskyist trial

On March 13, 1938, the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court found Bukharin guilty and sentenced him to death. Bukharin was sentenced to death on the basis of the decision of the commission headed by Mikoyan, the members of the commission were: Beria, Yezhov, Krupskaya, Khrushchev. The petition for clemency was rejected, and two days later he was shot at the Kommunarka training ground in the Moscow region, and was buried there.

Shortly before the execution, Bukharin composed a short message addressed to the future generation of party leaders, which his third wife, A.M. Larina, had memorized:
I am leaving this life. I lower my head not in front of the proletarian ax, which must be merciless, but also chaste. I feel helpless in front of the hellish machine, which, probably using the methods of the Middle Ages, possesses gigantic strength, fabricates organized slander, acts boldly and confidently.

There is no Dzerzhinsky, the wonderful traditions of the Cheka gradually disappeared into the past, when the revolutionary idea guided all its actions, justified cruelty to enemies, protected the state from all kinds of counter-revolution. Therefore, the organs of the Cheka have earned special trust, special honor, authority and respect. At present, for the most part, the so-called NKVD organs are a degenerated organization of unprincipled, decayed, well-to-do officials who, using the former authority of the Cheka, for the sake of Stalin's morbid suspicion, I'm afraid to say more, in pursuit of orders and glory, do their vile deeds. by the way, not realizing that they are simultaneously destroying themselves - history does not tolerate witnesses to dirty deeds!

On May 21, 1938, the General Meeting of the USSR Academy of Sciences excluded N. I. Bukharina from among the full members and from the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In the "cult" film "Lenin in 1918" (1939), in one of the episodes, Bukharin was portrayed as a conspirator, plotting an attempt on Lenin's life.
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 refused to rehabilitate Bukharin, Rykov, Zinoviev and Kamenev on the basis of “their long-term anti-Soviet struggle ". Bukharin, like most of those convicted in this process, except for Genrikh Yagoda (who was not rehabilitated at all), was rehabilitated only in 1988 (February 4) and in the same year was posthumously reinstated in the party (June 1988) and in the USSR Academy of Sciences (May 10, 1988 ).

Nikolai Bukharin's activities

Family
His first marriage was since 1911 to Nadezhda Lukina (his cousin, the sister of N.M. Lukin, who was also a cousin of Nikolai Bukharin), with whom they lived for about 10 years, she was arrested on the night of May 1, 1938. and was shot on March 9, 1940
The second time (1921-1929) he was married to Esther Gurvich (1895-1989). From this marriage - daughter Svetlana (1924-2003). This family renounced Bukharin in 1929.
For the third time (since 1934) he was married to the daughter of the party leader Yu. Larin Anna (1914-1996), known as a memoirist. 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.
Bukharin's grandson, Nikolai Yuryevich Larin (b. 1972), devoted his life to football. Heads (for 2010) the children's and youth football school of the GOU Education Center "Chertanovo" in Moscow.

Nikolai Bukharin's activities

Works attributed to Bukharin

In 1924, the emigre poet Elijah Britan published a pamphlet For I Am a Bolshevik !!, which contained the text of a letter allegedly received from one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Party. The letter was not signed, but rumors spread that the author was Bukharin. In March 1928, the French newspaper La Revue universelle published a French translation of the letter, under the heading "Boukharine: Un document sur le Bolchevisme." Some historians believe that Bukharin is indeed the author of this document. The letter contains extremely frank revelatory statements about the activities of the Bolshevik leadership, in particular, it says:

We are conducting an experiment on our own people, just as a medical student is experimenting on a corpse bought from an anatomical theater.

Nikolai Bukharin's activities

Works by N.I.Bukharin

Political Economy Rentier 1914/1919
World Economy and Imperialism 1915
The program of the communists (Bolsheviks) - M., 1918.
(co-authored with E. Preobrazhensky) The ABC of Communism: a popular explanation of the program of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). - M., 1919.
Economy in transition 1920
Theory of Historical Materialism 1921
Attack (collection of articles) 1924
Capital Accumulation and Imperialism 1925
Syndicalism and Communism // Pravda. - 1921, January 25.
About the world revolution, our country, culture and other things (Answer to academician I. Pavlov). - L .: Gosizdat, 1924.
Statement of the XIV Moscow Gubernia Conference // Pravda. - 1925, December 13.
Fight for new people. The role of cadres in the transition period (from a report in Leningrad on February 5, 1923) // Bukharin N. Struggle for cadres. - M.-L .: Young Guard, 1926.
Evil notes. - M .: GIZ, 1927.
Economist's Notes // Pravda. - 1928, September 30.
Darwinism and Marxism. Introductory article to the book "The Origin of Species" by Charles Darwin. - M.-L .: OGIZ-Selkhozgiz, 1935.
The political economy of the rentier. - Orbit, 1988.
Sketches. - State technical-theoretical publishing house, 1988. - ISBN 5-212-00225-7
Selected works. - M .: Politizdat, 1988 .-- ISBN 5-250-00634-5
Selected Works. - M .: Nauka, 1988 .-- ISBN 5-02-025779-6
Problems of the theory and practice of socialism. - M., 1989. - ISBN 5-250-01026-1
Academician N.I.Bukharin. Science and technology methodology and planning. Selected works / Compiled by V. D. Esakov, E. S. Levina. - M .: Nauka, 1989 .-- 344 p. - 5000 copies. - ISBN 5-02-008530-8
The road to socialism. - Novosibirsk: Science, 1990 .-- ISBN 5-02-029630-9
Revolution and culture. - Foundation named after N.I.Bukharina, 1993. - ISBN 5-250-02351-7
Prisoner of the Lubyanka. Prison manuscripts of Nikolai Bukharin. - M .: Airo-XXI; RGTEU, 2008. - ISBN 978-5-91022-074-8
On the Formulation of the Problems of Historical Materialism (1923)
Time. Novel. Preface and commentary by B. Ya. Frezinsky. - M .: Progress, 1994.

Nikolai Bukharin's activities

Memory
In 1919, Zolotorozhskaya Street in Moscow was renamed Bukharinskaya, but immediately after its arrest in 1937 it received a new name - Volochaevskaya.
Also in 1929-1937, the Dzerzhinsky district of the Kaluga region was called Bukharinsky.