Image: Nikolai Bukharin delivers the welcome speech on the meeting of Young Communist International 1925

Description: Nikolai Bukharin, the editor of Pravda and Projector, was top Soviet ideologist the best-known communist theoretician after Lenin. Starting with ideas of War Communism, together with Lenin, Bukharin softened the position and became the supporter of New Economic Policy (NEP). The macro-economic set up was that the large industries (transportation, electricity, steel, foreign trade) were national or joint ventures with foreign private capital (concessions), while small trade and agriculture were private. At the time, agriculture, small trade and services employed >90% of population. The ideological clash was to continue this policy and industrialize evolutionary (Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky) or to eliminate the private property in trade and services and forcefully collectivize the agriculture (Stalin, Molotov). The former prevailed and the Stalin’s economic policy led to internal war with peasants and catastrophic hunger in 1932-33 known as Holodomor in Ukraine. The classes of “kulaks (farmers)” and “nepmans (entrepreneurs/traders)” were eliminated (NKVD Order No. 00447). In Kafkaesque twist Nikolay Bukharin, “Lenin’s son”, the author of the “Communist Bible” (ABC of Communism), the living example of the core ideology, eventually became “the enemy of the people.” In exchange for the bargain to save his family, he confessed to the absurdist allegations (Trial of Twenty One) and was executed in 1938. His confession was amended personally by Stalin, who did not honor his part of the bargain: Bukharin’s wife was sent to GULAG, his son was raised in the orphanage. The Soviet Supreme Court repealed the convictions in 1988.
Title: Nikolai Bukharin delivers the welcome speech on the meeting of Young Communist International 1925
Credit: Ogoniok issue 17 (108) Apr 19, 1925
Author: Unknown authorUnknown author
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No