Nikolai Bukharin Никола́й Буха́рин |
|
---|---|
Full member of the 13th, 14th, 15th Politburo | |
In office 2 June 1924 – 17 November 1929 |
|
Candidate member of the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th Politburo | |
In office 8 March 1919 – 2 June 1924 |
|
Personal details | |
Born |
Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin 9 October 1888 Moscow, Russian Empire |
Died | 15 March 1938 Communarka shooting ground, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
(aged 49)
Cause of death | Execution |
Nationality | Russian |
Political party | Bolshevik, Communist Party |
Spouse(s) | Anna Larina |
Children | Svetlana, Yuri Larin |
Parents | Ivan Gavrilovich and Liubov Ivanovna Bukharin |
Education | Moscow University |
Known for | Editor of Pravda, Izvestia, author of The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period, Imperialism and World Economy, co-author of The ABC of Communism, principal framer of the Soviet Constitution of 1936 |
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (Russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин; 9 October [O.S. 27 September] 1888 – 15 March 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician and prolific author on revolutionary theory.
As a young man, he spent six years in exile, working closely with fellow exiles Lenin and Trotsky. After the revolution of February 1917, he returned to Moscow, where his Bolshevik credentials earned him a high rank in the party, and after the October Revolution, he became editor of the party newspaper Pravda.
Within the bitterly divided Bolsheviks, his gradual move to the right, as a defender of the New Economic Policy (NEP), positioned him favourably as Stalin's chief ally, and together they ousted Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev from the party leadership. From 1926 to 1929, Bukharin enjoyed great power as General Secretary of Comintern's executive committee. But Stalin’s decision to proceed with collectivisation drove the two men apart, and Bukharin was expelled from the Politburo in 1929.
When the Great Purge began in 1936, Stalin looked for any pretext to liquidate his former allies and rivals for power, and some of Bukharin's letters, conversations and tapped phone calls indicated disloyalty. Arrested in February 1937, he was charged with conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state and executed in March 1938, after a show trial that alienated many Western communist sympathisers.