The “favourite of the whole party,” killed in its name
In the mid-1920s Stalin told his comrades he and Bukharin were “the Himalayas; all the rest are little spots.” Ten years later he had him shot.
The brilliant theorist Lenin's testament called “the favourite of the whole party.” At Brest he was the far-left voice for revolutionary war; a decade later, defending NEP and the peasants against Stalin's Great Break, he became the “Right Deviation.” Removed from the Politburo in 1929, he returned to the Central Committee in 1934, edited Izvestia and helped draft the 1936 constitution, was arrested on treason charges in 1937 and shot after the 1938 trial. His note to Stalin, “Koba, why do you need me to die?”, is attributed through the Medvedevs' writing.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1916–17Edits the émigré press in New York
- 1917Published Imperialism and World Economy, written in 1915
- 1918Left Communist against the Brest peace
- 1918–29Editor of Pravda; Comintern leadership
- 1920Co-authored and published The ABC of Communism with Preobrazhensky
- 1921Published Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology
- 1925–28Theorist of NEP: “Enrich yourselves”
- 1929Falls as the Right Deviation
- 1934–36Edits Izvestia; helps draft the 1936 constitution
- 1938The third Moscow trial; shot
The Soviet Politburo
- Candidate 1919.03–1924.06
- Full member 1924.06–1929.11
1929.11 removed · Executed in 1938
Related historical events
- 1914–1918First World WarBolshevik revolutionary-war advocateAt Brest, he was the far-left voice for revolutionary war.
- 1917.12–1918.11Brest-Litovsk and Germany’s eastern occupationAdvocate of revolutionary warLeader of the Left Communists, he argued for revolutionary war and won 32 votes at the activists' meeting of 21 January; after the treaty was accepted he resigned his Central Committee post and published Kommunist.
- 1918–1922The Civil War and Foreign InterventionTop party leader, shaping policy direction
- 1919–1921The founding of the CominternRussian Communist Party delegateTook part in the founding and early congresses for the Bolsheviks.
- 1921–1928The New Economic Policy (NEP)NEP's leading theoristDefending the smychka, he developed the most systematic case for gradual socialist construction through the market.
- 1923–1927The Succession Struggle and the Left OppositionAuthor of the Pravda editorial that opened the 'Literary Discussion'His Pravda editorial 'How Not to Write the History of October' (Oct 1924) opened the 'Literary Discussion' against Trotsky's 'Lessons of October.' Later became Stalin's ally theorizing 'socialism in one country.'
- 1928–1937The Five-Year Plans and the Soviet TransformationRight opposition leaderArguing for the continuation of the NEP and gradual industrialization, he opposed forced collectivization and was pushed out of the leadership in 1929.
- 1932–1933The Holodomor and the Collectivisation FamineLeader of the Right Opposition and the last major advocate of NEP gradualismOpposed Stalin's forced collectivisation, arguing for continued NEP gradualism and market incentives for the peasantry; purged as the 'Right Deviation' in 1929.
- 1937–1938The Great PurgeTargetAn Old Bolshevik leader executed after the Moscow Trial.
11 July 1928 — the secret meeting with Kamenev
On 11 July 1928, Nikolai Bukharin slipped into Lev Kamenev's apartment, away from Stalin's eyes. Just three years earlier, they had been political enemies, each trying to destroy the other. Now they faced a common foe.
Bukharin warned Kamenev urgently: Stalin was preparing a 'Great Break' that would crush the peasantry and end NEP. And he said this: 'His line is disastrous. He thinks he is a pharaoh. We are all in danger. He will cut all our throats.'
Kamenev took notes of the conversation, notes that later fell into Stalin's hands. The secret meeting sealed the fate of Bukharin and the 'Right Opposition.' In 1929, Bukharin was removed from the Politburo. And ten years later, Stalin did indeed cut his throat.
At the Moscow Trial, Vyshinsky thundered: 'The advocate of the great proletarian revolution dared to slander our great Comrade Stalin!' Bukharin was shot in March 1938.
February 1936: the secret mission to Paris
In February 1936, shortly before the purge began in earnest, Stalin sent Bukharin to Paris to negotiate the purchase of the Marx and Engels archive, which the German Social Democratic Party had taken out of Germany after Hitler dissolved it. Bukharin, editor of Izvestia from 26 February 1934 to 16 January 1937, travelled with his young wife Anna Larina. The trip offered a chance of exile, but he decided against it, saying he could not live outside the Soviet Union.
His contacts were the Mensheviks who held the manuscripts on behalf of the SPD, above all Boris Nicolaevsky, and these conversations became the basis of the "Letter of an Old Bolshevik", an influential contemporary source on the Ryutin affair and the Kirov murder, though doubts about the letter's authenticity remain. According to Nicolaevsky, Bukharin, who had been forced to follow the party line since 1929, spoke his real view of Stalin's policy in Paris: he described "the mass annihilation of completely defenseless men, with women and children" under forced collectivisation and the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, and the transformation of the communists who carried it out, who "accepted terror as a normal administrative method and regarded obedience to all orders from above as a supreme virtue... They have truly become the cogs in a terrible machine." This is Nicolaevsky's account and must be cited as such.
To his boyhood friend Ilya Ehrenburg, Bukharin confided his suspicion that the whole trip was a trap set by Stalin. His Menshevik contacts in Paris later featured prominently in the 1938 trial.