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Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A political biography, 1888-1938

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Fascinating. For anyone with historical interest in Soviet thinking, politics and history, this is a great read. My only complaint is that while it went into some depth on Bukharin's Marxist economic ideas, it didn't follow up with detail on actual economic policy after the revolution - probably because Bukharin wasn't intimately involved with those policies. To be more clear, it did go into detail on political questions of economic policy, but not on the nitty gritty of planning per se. If you have interest in the politics, policies, theory and inner workings of the Bolshevik leadership, the men who fought with Lenin to gain power and worked with Stalin to keep it, this is the book for you. Obviously centered on Bukharin, this book provides insight outside of just him; it is not a personal biographical work, its a political biography, as it claims, meaning that it focuses on his ideas, policies and politics.

In this excellent "political biography," Stephen Cohen uses Nikolai Bukharin's life as revolutionary to critically examine the experience of the Bolsheviks in gaining and exercising power in what became the Soviet Union. Cohen explicitly pursues 2 major themes and implicitly pursues a third major theme. The explicit major themes are the relative heterorgeneity of the Bolsheviks, and in particular, the idea the Bukharin's economic and political policies posed a major alternative to the Stalinist revolution from above. The implicit important theme is the close relationship between Bukharin's development of Marxist ideology and the policies he advocated.

Bukharin turns out to be a fairly attractive character, and not just by comparison with the horrifying Stalin. Highly intelligent, well- (though largely self-) educated, articulate, relatively humane and open-minded, Bukharin was an engaged intellectual and probably the most popular of the Bolsheviks who made the Russian Revolution. He was also, as shown by his conduct during the Purge trial that resulted in his execution, personally courageous. Cohen is careful to show Bukharin's significant flaws. Bukharin was no liberal democrat, was dedicated to the idea of the Communist Party as a revolutionary vanguard controlling the state, and could be ruthless towards opponents.

Bukharin attempted throughout his life to extend Marxism in ways that responded accurately to the conditions of his time and was receptive to a variety of intellectual currents. In exile in the years leading up the Revolution, he lived in variety of Western states, including a brief stay in the USA. While living in Vienna, he attended lectures of prominent Austrian school economists like Wieser who very critical of Marx. Its clear that he read and profited from the revisionist Marxism of figure like Bernstein and Hilferding. All of this led him to new elaborations of Merxist theory that recognized the relative stability and regenerative powers of capitalism, as well as prescient concerns about the powers of states combining political and economic states. He remained committed to Marx's model of history and vague goals.

Cohen presents Buhkarin as one important strand of Bolshevik ideology and policy before, during, and after the Revolution. While Bukharin is naturally the focal point of the story, other points of view are discussed well. Cohen wants to overturn the impression that the Bolsheviks were an ideologically uniform group and explores the often marked differences in ideology and policy among the Bolsheviks. Bukharin, for example, was strongly opposed to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which the highly pragmatic Lenin recognized as the key to cementing Bolshevik control. Cohen follows the development of Bukharin's thought and policies throughout the post-revolutionary period, providing a very clear guide to the complex policy arguments of this period. Bukharin emerged as the principal advocate of the New Economic Policy (NEP), a largely market based program to conciliate the peasantry and restore the devastated economy. Backed by a sophisticated extension of Marxist thought in which Bukharin attempted to match some of Marx's basic ideas to the reality of the survival of capitalism in the postwar years, the success of a Communist Party in a rural nation, and the practical problems of the Soviet economy.

Bukharin's version of the NEP becomes the major alternative to Stalinism. Buhkarin supported and envisioned a largely market-based economy with private agriculture, industrial development driven by increasing consumer demand, and light industrial development. These policies were opposed by a spectrum of Bolsheviks who thought rapid industrialization was both feasible and necessary. Bukharin correctly feared that such policies would involve imposition of the brutalities of the Civil War period. Cohen provides an excellent narrative of the tortured politics of the 1920s which eventuated in Bukharin being out-manuevered by Stalin, followed by horrifying Stalinist revolution. Cohen presents this as an essentially tragic story in which Bukharin's tragic flaw was his total adherence to the Bolshevik ideal of a vanguard and dominating party. Bukharin also clearly favored a more pluralistic society and collective leadership which would have been something like the more liberal Eastern European Communist states or modern China. In Cohen's analysis, Bukharin was a real alternative to Stalin and the success of Bukharin's policies would have meant a much more humane Soviet Union - authoritarian but not totalitarian.

For readers who enjoy this excellent book, Robert Allen's very interesting Farm to Factory is an excellent complement. Allen, a prominent economic historian, argues that the NEP would not have led to successful industrialization, at least on anything less than a time scale of decades. If Allen is correct, a Bukharinist triumph over Stalin would probably have left the Soviet Union unable to fend off the German invasion.

This is a biography of a young communist, Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, who was the presumed heir to Lenin. Arguably his leadership would have resulted in an entirely different USSR had Stalin not ruthlessly seized power and purged his competitors, including the young, charismatic Bukharin. Bukharin was close to Lenin and was one of his principal supporters in the 1920s when Lenin backed off from collectivization of farms and businesses after it became obvious that it was hurting the economy and causing undue hardship. This "backing off", which allowed private farming and business to resume, was entitled the New Economic Policy or NEP. The economy began to prosper again but then Lenin suffered an untimely stroke that impaired his ability to lead and prompted Stalin to oust Trotsky and gradually purge all of the remaining leadership. Bukharin was one of the last to go, sentenced to death on bogus charges following a show trial in 1937. We know the tragic results of Stalin's brutal leadership. It led to the unnecessary death and imprisonment of countless millions of USSR citizens. Bukharin is an interesting historical figure because he was a revolutionary communist but, unlike Stalin, he was compassionate and a realist. His principal fault was his trust in Stalin and failure to capitalize on his own popularity. It seems clear that his leadership would have taken the USSR in a substantially different direction. Communism as a political and economic system has now been rejected in large part because of the failure of its experimentation in the USSR and its satellite nations. It's interesting to think of how that experiment might have fared under rational, compassionate leadership. Bukharin was a strong believer in Marxism, as were many intellectuals in the 20s-40s. But he also exhibited a willingness to be pragmatic in response to realities. One could speculate as to an alternative history for the USSR. Under Bukharin's influence the USSR would not have become a world scourge. The various USSR nationalities would not have been enslaved or displaced. There would not have been constant purging and imprisoning of citizens. The USSR would not have entered the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in which Germany divided Poland with the USSR. WWII would not have resulted in the subjugation of Eastern Europe. World history since the 30s would have been entirely different. But, unfortunately, this is all mere speculation.
As a companion to this book, I also highly recommend "This I Cannot Forget" by Bukharin,s young widow, Anna Larina. She was both a reliable witness to this period of history and suffered imprisonment and exile under Stalin.