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Marxist theorist and revolutionary, Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1888–1938) was an important figure in the early history of the Soviet Union. He is most famously credited with the development of gradualist New Economic Policy (NEP) in the 1920s, but this policy was abandoned by Joseph Stalin, and Bukharin was eventually arrested and executed.

Bukharin joined the Bolshevik Party in 1906 as student, but his studies were interrupted by arrests and eventual exile. He settled in Austria and Switzerland, where he participated in activities with other exiled Russian Marxists, including Vladimir Lenin. As a young man, Bukharin produced two major works, The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class (1914) and The World Economy and Imperialism (1915). The latter analyzed the clash between nation-states and the internationalization of capital, of which the latter, according to Bukharin, was producing networks of state capitalist trusts. Lenin wrote an approving introduction to the work and would become an important patron to Bukharin in his rise through the party’s ranks.

Bukharin returned to Russia in 1917 and was elected to the Bolshevik Party’s Central Committee three months before the Bolshevik Revolution (1917). He assumed many leadership positions, including editor of the party newspaper, Pravda (Truth), from 1917 to 1929, and head of the Communist International from 1926 to 1929.

In the first years of communist rule, he was more radical, clashing with Lenin on such issues as concluding a peace with Germany and defending the rapid move to a communist system under “war communism.” He produced The Economics of the Transition (1920), which grappled with the issue of how to create a communist state.

By the early 1920s, Bukharin had moderated his position, joining with Stalin in favoring a more gradual and peaceful evolution to communism, which was to be known as the New Economic Policy (1921–1929). Lenin, prior to his death in 1924, praised Bukharin as one of the party’s most brilliant thinkers. Bukharin defended NEP in The Road to Socialism and the Worker Peasant Alliance (1925). NEP foresaw a limited role for markets in an economy in which the “commanding heights” of industry would be dominated by the state. Bukharin hoped that socialism would gradually emerge through the NEP. However, by 1929, Stalin turned against the NEP as too gradual and too capitalist, and Bukharin lacked the political power to challenge Stalin successfully. He was gradually removed from positions of leadership and was expelled from the party altogether in 1937. After a show trial on charges of treason, he was executed in 1938.

After the tragedy of Stalinism, Bukharin’s views were reevaluated in a more positive light by many on the political left in the West and reformers in the Soviet Union as the “road not taken,” a possible means to produce a more humane communism. Ideas of the NEP influenced Mikhail Gorbachev, who, as the last Soviet leader (1985–1991), politically rehabilitated Bukharin in 1988.

Bibliography:

Coates, Ken. The Case of Nikolai Bukharin. Nottingham, U.K.: Spokesman, 1982.
Cohen, Stephen F. Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Gluckstein, Donny. Tragedy of Bukharin. London: Pluto, 1994.
Haynes, Michael. Nikolai Bukharin and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985.
Weitz, Eric D., and Nicholas N. Kozlov. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin: A Centenary Appraisal. New York: Praeger, 1990.