Nikolai bukharin and stalin biography
Pub Date: February 1999
ISBN: 9780231107310
416 Pages
Format: Paperback
List Price:$42.00£35.00
Pub Date: April 1998
ISBN: 9780231107303
416 Pages
Format: Hardcover
List Price:$110.00£92.00
Here at last in English is Nikolai Bukharin's autobiographical novel and final work. Many dissident texts of the Stalin era were saved by chance, by bravery, or by cunning; others were systematically destroyed. Bukharin's work, however, was simultaneously preserved and suppressed within Stalin's personal archives.
At once novel, memoir, political apology, and historical document, How It All Began, known in Russia as "the prison novel," adds deeply to our understanding of this vital intellectual and maligned historical figure. The panoramic story, composed under the worst of circumstances, traces the transformation of a sensitive young man into a fiery agitator, and presents a revealing new perspective on the background and causes of the revolution that transformed the face of the twentieth century.
Among the millions of victims of the reign of terror in the Soviet Union of the 1930's, Bukharin stands out as a special case. Not yet 30 when the Bolsheviks took power, he was one of the youngest, most popular, and most intellectual members of the Communist Party. In the 1920's and 30's, he defended Lenin's liberal New Economic Policy, claiming that Stalin's policies of forced industrialization constituted a "military-feudal exploitation" of the masses. He also warned of the approaching tide of European fascism and its threat to the new Bolshevik revolution. For his opposition, Bukharin paid with his freedom and his life. He was arrested and spent a year in prison. In what was one of the most infamous "show trials" of the time, Bukharin confessed to being a "counterrevolutionary" while denying any particular crime and was executed in his prison cell on March 15, 1938.
While in prison, Bukharin wrote four books, of which thi
Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin's Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina
Drawing from Hoover Institution archival documents, Paul Gregory sheds light on how the world's first socialist state went terribly wrong and why it was likely to veer off course through the tragic story of Stalin's most prominent victims: Pravda editor Nikolai Bukharin and his wife, Anna Larina.
Thursday, April 1, 2010 1 min read By:Hoover Institution PressBooks by Hoover Fellows
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In Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin’s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina, Paul Gregory sheds light on how the world’s first socialist state went terribly wrong and why it was likely to veer off course through the story of two of Stalin’s most prominent victims. A founding father of the Soviet Union at the age of twenty-nine, Nikolai Bukharin was the editor of Pravda and an intimate of Lenin’s exile. (Lenin later dubbed him “the favorite of the party.”) But after Bukharin crossed swords with Stalin over their differing visions of the world’s first socialist state, he paid the ultimate price with his life. His wife, Anna Larina, the stepdaughter of a high Bolshevik official, spent much of her life in prison camps and in exile after her husband’s execution. Drawn from Hoover Institution archival documents, the story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina begins with the optimism of the socialist revolution and then turns into a dark saga of foreboding and terror as the game changes from political struggle to physical survival. Told for the most part in the words of the participants, it is, as Robert Conquest says in his foreword, “a story told to show the horrors of fate, of personal mistreatment and suffering by real people.” It is also a story of courage and cowardice, strength and weakness, misplaced idealism, missed opportunities, bungling, and, above all, love.
Drawn from Hoover Institution archival documents,
Martyred for Communism
April 15, 1937: It is late night or early morning—the prisoner has little sense of time. He uses the night to work feverishly on his writing, following days filled with interrogations and negotiations. He repositions himself periodically to take advantage of the dim light from a single, naked bulb. His small cell is littered with books and papers that he has wheedled from his captors. Tonight he has put aside work on a semiautobiographical novel to compose a letter to the person who controls his fate. He addresses the man warmly, assuring him that “there are no bad feelings despite [your] removing me from my surroundings and sending me here.”
The prisoner, nearing his fiftieth birthday, is small in stature; a prominent mustache and goatee divert attention from a hairline that began receding in youth. His hair is gray, with wisps of the original red. Periodically he paces his cell, then returns to his task.
His letter, addressed “Dear Koba,” rambles, runs on at tedious length, and intersperses hysteria, anger, bitterness, and remorse with ambitious plans for the future. He describes his life in prison, writing as if to allay any concerns “Koba” might have that he is being mistreated. (He has ceased going outside for exercise because he feels ashamed when other prisoners look at him.) The prison regime is strict: no feeding the pigeons, no talking in the corridors, no noises in the cell, a light burning day and night. But it’s also fair: the food is good, and the young jailers treat him decently.
Parts of the letter appear bizarrely inappropriate: “In my lifetime, I have known intimately only four women.” At the end, the prisoner makes his plea: “Settle me in a hut somewhere outside of Moscow, give me a new name, let two NKVD officers live in my home, allow me to live with my family, let me work for the common good with books and translations under a pseudonym, let me till the soil.” The letter ends: “My heart is breaking that this is a S Aarons, Eric and Laurie Eric born Marrickville; their father's parents had been VSP members and he a CPA member. Eric joined the YCL in 1935, later working as a bootmaker, and later a sculptor; appointed to Secretariat in 1963; led move of CPA to Euro-Communist position from 1967; retired from position of Joint National Secretary in 1982 but fully supported the dissolution of the CPA in March 1991. Laurie CPA General Secretary 1966-76. Artem (Sergeyev) Bolshevik leader in exile in Australia 1910 - 1917, jailed, tramways, meat unions, Bolshevik CC May 1917 - died in train crash 1921, EC of CI. Bakunin, Mikhail 1814-70; Russian revolutionary. One of the founders of anarchism. In the 1830s Bakunin was a follower of Hegel's philosophy. In 1848 he took part in the German revolution (the rising in Dresden). He was arrested (1849), and eventually handed over to the Russian government and sentenced to life imprisonment. After the death of the Tsar Nicholas I, Bakunin was exiled to Siberia (1857). In 1861 he escaped exile and went to London. Bakunin became a member of the League of Peace and Freedom. At the Berne Congress of this League (1868) he and his supporters (E. Reclus, Aristide Rey, Jaclard, Fanelli, N. Joukovsky, V. Mratchkovsky and others) were in a minority, and seceded from the League and established their own International Alliance of Socialist Democracy. In 1869 this Alliance became affiliated to the International. In the International Bakunin was an opponent of Marx. In Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy Engels wrote that Bakunin combined Stirner with Proudhon and christened this combination "anarchism." Baracchi, Guido Born 1887, son of Italian nobleman who was the Victorian government astronomer. Influenced by guild socialists while visiting Europe. Through Andrade's bookshop, was the main distributor of Marxist literature in Melbourne; co-founder of the Victorian Labor College; jailed f
Political Biographies