Stalin and Bukharin

During the early years of the Soviet Union, the supreme leader was Vladimir Lenin. Surrounding him were others, the most notable being Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, and Josef Stalin. After Lenin suffered a debilitating stroke and subsequently died, a power struggle ensued for control of the Communist Party and of the country as a whole. Stalin, by dint of his position as General Secretary, was able to recruit many new faces to the Party, with loyalty to him being a qualifying factor for acceptance. Also, he had bugs planted throughout the Kremlin in order to keep up with the actions of his rivals. The main conflict during this period was between Stalin, then allied with Bukharin, and Trotsky. Trotsky was pushed out of his position and ultimately exiled (to be assassinated in Mexico in 1940). During this period, the Stalin-Bukharin alliance emphasized slow, steady growth and a liberalization of economic policy which allowed for land ownership and market forces. Once Trotsky was defeated and out of the country, Stalin made a leftward turn, claiming that farmers were withholding their grain in order to enjoy higher prices. He began a brutal austerity program whereby raids on farms, in search of hidden grain hordes, were combined with the push for collectivization and forced grain requisitioning through severe quotas. The culminating effect of these actions was a period of mass famine, particularly in Ukraine. Bukharin, who had maintained a personal friendship with Stalin into 1928, was horrified at his colleague's shift. There ensued, within the Party at the highest levels, a political struggle between supporters of Bukharin and those of Stalin. At first, it appeared that Bukharin had a slightly upper hand in the contest. Then, at a crucial Party meeting in the summer of 1928, Stalin reportedly took Bukharin aside and told him, “You and I are the Himalayas. The rest are nobodies. Let’s come to an understanding.” Bukharin reacted to this gesture, not by embracing it and trying to reach an understanding, but rather by angrily storming back to his other colleagues and telling them what Stalin had said. From then on, the friendship that had existed between the two men went cold, and Stalin went all out and successfully outmaneuvered Bukharin, forcing him out of power. Later, in 1938, Bukharin would be one of the victims of Stalin’s Party purges of 1936-38 and was executed on a trumped-up charge.

When Stalin made his proposition to his old friend, Bukharin could have gone with it and stayed on in a more supportive role. He could have been on the inside when the tough actions were carried out in the ensuing months and years. And he could have carefully ameliorated the devastating effects as an insider, while as an outsider he could only shake his head in dismay. I wonder how the world would have turned out had he kept his cool with Stalin and worked out a deal. It’s a fact that Stalin, following the power struggle against Bukharin, became increasingly paranoid and suspected and imprisoned (if they were lucky, for many were shot) anyone he remotely suspected of disloyalty in his vast Gulag network of prisons. It was one of those moments when one has to ask, what if……