Anna Larina
| Anna Larina | |
|---|---|
| Born | 27 January 1914 |
| Died | 24 February 1996 (aged 82) |
| Resting place | Troyekurovskoye Cemetery, Moscow |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Spouse(s) | Nikolai Bukharin |
Anna Mikhailovna Larina, Анна Михайловна Ларина (27 January 1914 – 24 February 1996) was the second wife of the Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin and spent many years trying to rehabilitate her husband after he was executed in 1938. She was the author of a memoir entitled This I Cannot Forget.
Anna Larina was born in 1914. She was adopted by Yuri Larin, so she grew up amongst professional revolutionaries who were very high up in the Soviet Union. As a young girl, she came to know Bukharin, who was 26 years her senior, and she constantly wrote girlish love notes to him. She married Bukharin in 1934 and they had a son, Yuri in 1936.
In 1937 when her son was less than one year old, she was separated from him for almost 20 years when the NKVD came and arrested her. In 1937, there were accusations against Bukharin for spying, attempting to dismember the Soviet Union, organising kulak uprisings, plotting to murder Joseph Stalin and attempting mysterious acts towards Vladimir Lenin in the past. Bukharin never understood why he was being slandered but was mentally and psychologically prepared for death.
Before they were separated, Bukharin instructed his wife to memorise his final testament (knowing that it would be suppressed by Stalin) in which he implored future generations of communist leaders to exonerate him. Not daring to write it down, she later recalled, she used to lull herself to sleep in prison by repeating her husband's words silently to herself "like a prayer." It was not published in full until 1988.
Anna was first sent into exile and then arrested on 5 September 1938 and taken to Astrakhan. “In December 1938, I was returning to an ‘investigative prison’ in Moscow following a year and a half of arrests and imprisonments. First came exile Astrakhan, then arrest and imprisonment there; next, I was sent to a camp in Tomsk for family members of so-called enemies of the people; on the way, I was held in transit cells in Saratov and Sverdlovsk; after several months in Tomsk, I was arrested a second time and sent to an isolation prison in Novosibirsk; from Novosibirsk, I was transferred to a prison near Kemerovo, where after three months I was taken out and put on the train for Moscow.”
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