Nikolai Bukharin

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was the leader of the USSR from 1924 to 1941. Famous and influential Marxist theorist, he was one of the major contestants to become Lenin's successor in the power vacuum that followed his death. Eventually Bukharin would become the leader of the USSR, and became famous for his "Socialism in One Country" policy and his heavy support of the fairly liberal NEP. While exploring a contingency plan in the Far East to combat Operation Barbarossa, he was overthrown by his dubious ally Joseph Stalin, and Bukharin disappeared in Siberia without a trace...

Before 1917

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was born on 8 October, 1888, in Moscow. The son of two school teachers, Ivan Gavrilovich Bukharin and Liubov Ivanovna Bukharina. His political career began at 16, when he joined his good friend, iconic author Ilya Ehrenburg, in student protests at Moscow University, related to the 1905 Revolution. He then joined the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1906, joining the Bolshevik faction. Together with Grigory Solkonikov, he convened the 1907 national youth conference in Moscow, widely regarded as the founding of the Komsomol. By the time he was 20, he was a member of the party’s Moscow Committee. The committee was, however, heavily infiltrated by the Okhrana, and as Bukharin was one of the Committee's leaders, he became targeted by the secret police. In the meantime he grew associations with party members Valerian Obolensky and Vladimir Smirnov and met his future first wife Nadezhda Mikhailovna Lukina, his cousin and sister of Marxist historian Nikolai Lukin, also a member of the party, whom Nikolai would marry in 1911. After a brief imprisonment, Bukharin was exiled to Onega, from which he would escape to Hanover. He would stay in Hanover until going to Krakow in 1912, meeting Lenin for the first time. While in exile, Bukharin would establish himself in the 20s as a major Marxist theorist while continuing his education. His work Imperialism and World Economy influenced Lenin, who freely borrowed from it, in his larger and better-known work, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. He and Lenin also often had hot disputes on theoretical issues, as well as Bukharin's closeness with the European Left and his anti-statist tendencies. Bukharin developed an interest in the works of Austrian Marxists and heterodox Marxist economic theorists, such as Aleksandr Bogdanov, who deviated from Leninist positions. Also, while in Vienna in 1913, he helped the Georgian Bolshevik Joseph Stalin write an article, "Marxism and the National Question", at Lenin's request. In October 1916, while based in New York City, Bukharin edited the newspaper Novy Mir (New World) with Leon Trotsky and Alexandra Kollontai. When Trotsky arrived in New York in January 1917, Bukharin was the first of the émigrés to greet him. (Trotsky's wife recalled, "with a bear hug and immediately began to tell them about a public library which stayed open late at night and which he proposed to show us at once" dragging the tired Trotskys across town "to admire his great discovery").