Николай Иванович Бухарин (Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist theorist) Add a review

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (Russian: Николай Иванович Бухарин, IPA: [nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪdʑ bʊˈxarʲɪn]; 9 October [O.S. 27 September] 1888 – 15 March 1938) was a Russian revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist theorist. A prominent Bolshevik described by Vladimir Lenin as a "most valuable and major theorist" of the Communist Party, Bukharin was active in the Soviet leadership from 1917 to his purge in the 1930s.

Bukharin joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906, and studied economics at Moscow Imperial University. In 1910, he was arrested and internally exiled to Onega, but the following year escaped abroad, where he met Lenin and Leon Trotsky and built his reputation with works such as Imperialism and World Economy (1915). After the February Revolution of 1917, Bukharin returned to Moscow and became a leading figure in the party, and after the October Revolution became editor of its newspaper, Pravda. He led the Left Communist faction in 1918, and during the civil war wrote The ABC of Communism (1920; with Yevgeni Preobrazhensky) and Historical Materialism: A System of Sociology (1921), among other works.

Bukharin was initially a proponent of war communism, but in 1921 supported the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) and became its chief theorist and advocate, supporting the party leadership against Trotsky and the Left Opposition. By late 1924, this stance had positioned Bukharin favourably as Joseph Stalin's chief ally, with Bukharin soon elaborating Stalin's theory of "socialism in one country". From 1926 to 1929, Bukharin served as General Secretary of the Comintern's executive committee. Following Stalin's decision to proceed with agricultural collectivisation in the Great Break, Bukharin was labelled as the leader of the Right Opposition and was removed from Pravda, the Comintern, and the party leadership in 1929.

After a period in lower positions, in 1934 Bukharin was reelected to the Central Committee and became editor of the newspaper Izvestia. He was a principal architect of the 1936 Soviet Constitution. During the Great Purge, Bukharin was accused of treason in February 1937 and executed after a show trial in 1938.