Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938 Reprint Edition

by Stephen F. Cohen (Author)

52 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0195026979

ISBN-10: 0195026977

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This classic biography carefully traces Bukharin's rise to and fall from power, focusing particularly on the development of his theories and programmatic ideas during the critical period between Lenin's death in 1924 and the ascendancy of Stalin in 1929.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The only significant book on the earlier Soviet experience not trapped in simplistic Cold War categories. Crucial for advanced undergraduates."--Arthur Williamson, California State University at Sacramento

"This magnificent book will come to be regarded by those whose opinions are worth listening to as one of the two or three really outstanding studies in the history of the Soviet Union of the past 25 years."--Leonard Schapiro, The New York Review of Books

"The best book on the USSR to be published for many years."--Alec Nove, Soviet Studies

"Cohen has not only written the most significant of the recent biographies of early Soviet leaders, but he has also posed questions about Soviet history which will be central in the discussion in coming years, perhaps decades."--The Russian Review

"Bukharin has at last found full-length vindication in Professor Cohen's distinguished biography, undoubtedly one of the most important books on Soviet politics to appear in recent years."--Political Science Quarterly

About the Author

Stephen F. Cohen is at Princeton University.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (February 7, 1980)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 560 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195026977
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195026979
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.51 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 1.5 x 5.1 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #697,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #372 in Political Ideologies
- #583 in Historical Russia Biographies
- #809 in American Revolution Biographies (Books)

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Chris

Extremely Readable, Sympathetic Biography

Reviewed in the United States on April 30, 2020

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In this highly accessible, well-written, sympathetic biography, Bukharin is portrayed as a predecessor to Tito, Gorbachev, and Deng. Like these three Communist leaders, Bukharin supported an evolutionary path to communism. During the long transition from capitalism to communism, society would be guided by the Communist Party and the "commanding heights" of the economy would be nationalized. However, in stark contrast to Stalinism and Maoism, there would be a regulated market and cultural diversity.

Bukharin is also portrayed as having foresight into the the actual path that Marxism would take in the 20th Century. Unlike Marx himself and many of his early followers (Lenin, Trotsky, etc.), Bukharin did not believe that the international socialist revolution would be led by the Western proletariat. Instead, Bukharin argued that the peasants of the East were the major revolutionary force. Bukharin was obviously proven correct, as the most successful Marxist movements emerged in China, Korea, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

5 people found this helpful

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Brian Wayne Wells

Rare Bolshevik Biography

Reviewed in the United States on December 26, 2013

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As a student of Russian History, I have always been disappointed in the lack of biographies of early bolshevik leaders--outside of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky . This book is one of the few biographies of Bolshevik leaders that I have found in the English language. It was a rare find.

I found the gook very easy to read. During the October, 1917 Bolshevik revolution, Nicolai Bukharin was a leader of the Bolsheviks in the city of Moscow. Whereas most of the histories of the October Bolshevik revolution of 1917, that I have read, have dealt only with the October revolution in St. Petersburg, this book provided a wide survey of the October revolution in the city of Moscow. Additionally, the book provided an accurate examination and explanation for the supposed shift of Nicolai Bukharin from the left wing of the Bolshevik Communist Party to the right wing of that party over the issue of the New Economic Program.

11 people found this helpful

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Guinevere Nell

Excellent detailed, biographical, theory-drenched history

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2006

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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.

29 people found this helpful

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Ed Gehead

The Soviet world that could have been.

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2011

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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.

21 people found this helpful

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walter g. mcmillan

This book is an excellent well written historical account of the Bolshevik intellectual and ...

Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2015

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This book is an excellent well written historical account of the Bolshevik intellectual and theoretician named M. Bukharin.
He was a true Russian ideologue/intellectual admired by N. Lenin, who like many others, believed that Socialism/Communism was the
future for the Russian people.. Unfortunately, Bukharin, Trotsky, Kirov, and many others, were murdered
by Stalin and his apparatchiks.

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Adam Carlton

This fine biography finally does justice to Bukharin

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 10, 2017

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The Russian revolution of 1917 was the most significant political event of the twentieth century - and possibly of the twenty first. There will always be dreams of the perfect society and a belief that capitalism is not it. Putting religion to one side, three centuries of progressive secular thought have led to no significant alternative to Marxism.

In 1917 a party which was completely committed to Marx's vision attained state power. As they saw it, they had an opportunity to create the future they dreamt of. Unfortunately, there was no blueprint, no roadmap. They had been granted the vision; the rest they would have to work out for themselves.

Post-revolution, World War One still continued. The workers and peasants across Russia were out of control. The peasants were busy expropriating the landlords and creating that regressive peasant-utopia of small self-owned landholdings. The workers had seized the factories and were running them themselves. The army had elected soldiers' councils and was ungovernable. The economy had collapsed. Then came the armed counter-revolution.

The Soviet regime survived - just - but only by taking administrative control of industry and the agrarian economy. This was the period known as 'War Communism'.

By 1921 the policy was bankrupt: peasants would not produce grain and livestock to be requisitioned; micromanagement of industrial production was a disaster. The party introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP) which restored market relations between town and country and in the SME sector.

Important sections of the Bolshevik party violently opposed NEP seeing the danger of a restoration of capitalism. Yet over the next few years the policy was remarkably successful in stabilising, and then growing the economy. Nikolai Bukharin - warm, gregarious intellectual, liberal and cultured - was the principal architect of NEP economics and achieved great prominence in this period.

By 1928, NEP had hit the buffers. Factories were at full capacity, agricultural productivity was abysmal (all those undercapitalised smallholdings) while unemployment was increasing in the cities as peasants deserted the land. Worse, with fascism on the ascendant in Germany, there were worrying indications of war.

The problem was the urgent need for a massive injection of capital to drive industrialisation: electrification, heavy industry, transportation. No-one seriously believed the capitalist financial sector could be relied upon - the source would have to be endogenous.

Bukharin and his group believed that an organic, harmonious re-tweaking of the economy could keep everyone happy: the peasantry, workers, light and heavy industry. The unpleasant alternative was to soak the peasants. This would involve forced collectivisation of the agrarian workforce into large, economically-efficient holdings and manipulation of agricultural prices to subsidise industrial investment.

Since no-one thought the peasants would agree to this, it could only be achieved by force. In 1929 Stalin launched his 'revolution from above', mass agrarian requisitions and forced collectivization.

Over the next decade as the new policies played out, the level of opposition within the party was immense. Stalin's response was intense repression, culminating in the infamous Moscow Trials. Bukharin, the 'Last Bolshevik', was perhaps the most high-profile victim.

We look at the Russian revolution and ask: did it have to turn out this way? Could Trotsky or Bukharin have won? If they had, would things have turned out .. OK?

You would expect Stephen Cohen - such a fan of Bukharin - to be pretty optimistic here. And yet .. . If Bukharin had won, the economy would not have developed as it undoubtedly did (despite many stupidities) under Stalin's first and second five-year plans.

Because Soviet Russia did manage to industrialise (on the backs and bodies of the peasantry) they were able to defeat the Nazis in WW2. We in the UK probably owe our existence as an independent country to that fact.

Omelettes and eggs: despite all the calumny heaped upon Stalin personally, he didn't do it all by himself. His policies had support - perhaps because they were least-wrong. The tragedy for Russia was that once the mincing machine had done its work they couldn't find a way to retire Stalin and the police state and return to Bukharin's vision.

But the deeper truth from Stephen Cohen's excellent book is that even Bukharin's liberal Marxism was in practice illiberal, undemocratic, top-down and unworkable. To this day we lack any Marxist thinkers who can summon up a compelling and authoritative strategy for improving on capitalism.

In this centenary of the Bolshevik revolution everybody will have an agenda. Liberal pieties will not be in short supply. Cohen’s biography of Bukharin is a breath of fresh air, refreshingly non-doctrinaire and taking the reader into the heart of debates untainted by hindsight.

6 people found this helpful

Jeff P.

Update to my review of Cohen's book on Bukharin

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 20, 2015

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Prompted by a derogatory remark about Bukharin that Dolores Ibarruri makes in her autobiography, I had a feeling Bukharin might be one of those hated 'Left Deviationists' the Bolsheviks have spent decades trying to root out from their midst since 1917. In general 'Left Deviationists' have more regard for 'the masses', and for 'spontaneity' in revolutionary struggle than they do for Party cadres and Party leaders who insist on taking the dominant role and, like the Jacobins before them, seek to discipline and regiment their revolutionary comrades for the good of The Cause. Trotsky was the most famous example of this heretical type. Sure enough it soon emerges from this book that Bukharin shared the 'Left Deviationist' weakness, as Party 'centrists' see it, for thinking there may be sense in going along with 'the masses' in important aspects of the 'building of socialism'' instead of wanting to dismiss them as insufficiently Marxist/Leninist. Hence Bukharin tended to favour policy that gave encouragement to the peasants (by far the most numerous class in Soviet Russia) despite Marx and Lenin insisting it was the relatively tiny urban proletariat (guided of course by the Party) rather than the peasants who should be the major force in the revolution. Though Lenin himself came round to Bukharin's view before his death in 1924 and was optimistic about the role to be played by the peasants in the more or less 'mixed' economy of Bukharin's Five Year Plans, Stalin soon came to challenge this view. The 'mixed' economy was, he argued, a form of 'pandering to the lust for profit that peasants always were and always will be wedded to', and thus incompatible with 'building socialism'. The 'expropriation', persecution, imprisonment, exile and, finally, starvation of millions of peasants followed as an 'historical necessity'. Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s Bukharin's previous high prestige amongst his fellow Bolsheviks (their leading theoretician, in fact) exposed him to increasing pressure from elements to the Right of the Party who Stalin was seeking support from for his very different way of doing things. By 1938 Bukharin and his Leftist allies in the Party were 'purged'. The usual trumped up charges that Solzhenitsyn, amongst others, have made us all-too familiar with (engaging in counter-revolutionary propaganda, conspiring to sell out the Revolution to the forces of reaction in Europe, even conspiring to assassinate the Great Leader himself) all appeared in the show trials of that period. Unlike Dolores Ibarruri comrade Bukharin refused to slink away from defeat. He remained defiant and at his post to the last. His defence may strike people today as less than startling (after 'The Gulag Archipelago' and Zamiatin's 'We' and Orwell's '1984'). It consisted in saying that no socialist revolution, however politically correct in terms of theory, that prohibits and suppresses basic traditional values such as human warmth and generosity and forgiveness and the freedoms of speech and thought has any right to believe it has succeeded, or could ever succeed. What Stalin sought was the enslavement and terrorisation of an entire population by an elite of Party activists and their henchmen. By this means he hoped to make Russia strong enough to resist Hitler. He succeeded at that. But in succeeding he became, not all at once, but steadily, year by year, a veritable mirror image of Hitler; in historical terms another public menace, another tyrant, another madman locked into the fatal attraction such men have for the iron cage of Leviathan. Bukharin had warned from the middle 1920s onwards that this was where Bolshevism in Russia could be heading. And more worryingly he warned that this is where many types of society may be heading.

2 people found this helpful

Luis Moreno abatí

Arrival in time

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 2, 2019

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Intresting book

Amazon Customer

Eye opening.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 6, 2019

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Insightful and detailed

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