Chapter 23: Nikolai Bukharin
For those who care only for curiosity and not for the substance of historical events, the most striking of the defendants in the Third Moscow Trial was Yagoda, the former People’s Commissar of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and not such world-famous revolutionary leaders as Bukharin, Likov, or Rakovsky. Of course, this is not surprising, because the fact that Yagoda was put in the dock as a co-accused of those whom he had put on trial and even sentenced to death added a surprisingly comical flavor to the farce of the trial.
But for communists and those who know something about the history of the Party, the central figure in this trial was not Yagoda, of course, but the best Bolshevik, Lenin’s closest comrade, Bukharin.
Like other party leaders, Bukharin had helped Stalin and Zinoviev to belittle Trotsky’s role in the October Revolution and to push him out of power because he feared Trotsky’s influence would be too great. In fact, when Lenin was still alive, before the party leaders were involved in power struggles and mutual denunciations, Bukharin, like others, praised Trotsky enthusiastically in his writings. For example, speaking of the historic victory of the October Revolution, Bukharin wrote.
“Trotsky was the outstanding, fearless theoretician of the revolution, the tireless propagator of the revolution, who, in the name of the Revolutionary Military Council of Petrograd, solemnly proclaimed to the thunderous applause of all the participants that the Provisional Government no longer existed!”
Many years later, when the Central Propaganda Department under Stalin’s control had allowed the slanderous slander of “Trotsky is a counter-revolutionary” to take root, the articles written by the old Bolsheviks in praise of Trotsky became the unforgivable sins of a Party member in history, with the exception of Stalin, who also had this “historical stain”: when Lenin was alive, Stalin wrote in Pravda: “The crucial action of the Petrograd garrison in turning to support the Soviets and the decisive and courageous action of the Revolutionary Military Committee, all of which the Party will owe primarily and above all to Comrade Trotsky. “
Bukharin was allied with Stalin for a somewhat longer period of Time than were Zinoviev and Kamenev. When Stalin took away the real power from Zinoviev and Kamenev through intrigues, Bukharin still naively believed that he, as the recognized ideologue of the whole party, rightly deserved the first seat in the Politburo. Really, who else could he have given this position to? Could it be that he was not the one who actively formulated Soviet policy for Lenin? Wasn’t he the one who drafted the basic documents on foreign policy for the Party and the Comintern? Now, who else but he could have determined the next path of development of the Soviet state in accordance with the true essence of Marxism-Leninism? It couldn’t be Stalin, a mediocre and vulgar man, could it?
But Bukharin was doomed to miscalculation: the right-wing opposition he led was soon sidelined from the leadership, and after a longer period of intra-party struggle, he himself was expelled from the Politburo and later from the party.
The grassroots party members could not figure out for a long time what had happened at the top, in the Politburo, to some events. It was only after seeing the internal briefing that it became clear that the party was again divided, and that the confrontation between the Stalinist group and the “right” group of Bukharin, Likov, and Tomsky had reached the point of a crossfire. At a meeting of the Politburo, Bukharin, enraged by Stalin’s duplicity, said in public what Stalin had said to him privately in the past to win him over: “Bukharchik, you and I are the Himalayas, the others (i.e., the other Politburo members) are pathetic little flies! “
Hearing this, Stalin’s face suddenly changed and he shouted.
“Disinformation! Bukharin came up with this kind of talk to incite the members of the Politburo to rise against me!”
Stalin was in a state of distress, for similar complimentary remarks had been made in private to almost every member of the Politburo.
Bukharin and Stalin had been friendly for a long time before they raised the right-wing opposition. The alliance between them began when Lenin dictated the “will. In the “will”, Lenin suggested that the Central Committee remove Stalin from the post of general secretary, and also expressed some uneasiness about Bukharin. But on the whole, Lenin had a good opinion of Bukharin, saying, “Bukharin is not only the most valuable and the greatest theoretician of the Party, but he should also be considered a favorite figure of the whole Party.”
While it is true that Bukharin was well respected in the party, and that members of the Komsomol even worshipped him like a saint, I have serious doubts that he could be a “favorite figure of the party”. However, this is not relevant. In fact, Lenin was very close to Bukharin, and he only asked others to treat him as he did.
Stalin had hidden Lenin’s “will” and, if it were not for Krupska, he would have burned these documents, which he hated and feared. You know, in the “will”, Lenin praised every one of his closest comrades, but not a word of praise for Stalin. Later, after Stalin seized power, he used a more effective means than simply destroying a few pages of documents (physically eliminating all those praised in the “will”), turning Lenin’s “will” into a dead letter.
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