Nikolai Bukharin - The February 1917 Revolution To 1923

The February 1917 Revolution To 1923

At the news of Russian Revolution of February 1917, Bukharin returned to Russia by way of Japan and at once became one of the leading Bolsheviks in Moscow, being elected to the Central Committee. During the October Revolution, he drafted, introduced, and defended the revolutionary decrees of the Moscow Soviet. Bukharin then represented the Moscow Soviet in their report to the revolutionary government in Petrograd. After the second 1917 revolution, he became the editor of the party's newspaper, Pravda.

Bukharin believed passionately in the promise of world revolution. In the Russian turmoil near the end of World War I, when a negotiated peace with the Central Powers was looming, he demanded a continuance of the war, fully expecting to incite all the foreign proletarian classes to arms. Even as he was uncompromising toward Russia's battlefield enemies, he also rejected any fraternization with the capitalist Allied powers: he reportedly wept when he learned of official negotiations for assistance.

Bukharin emerged as the leader of the Left Communists in bitter opposition to Lenin's decision to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In this wartime power struggle, he was urged by some of his more fiery allies to have Lenin arrested. He rejected this idea immediately, but the issue would later become the basis of Stalinist charges against him, culminating in the show trial of 1938.

After the ratification of the treaty, Bukharin resumed his responsibilities within the party. In March 1919, he became a member of the Comintern's executive committee and a candidate member of Politburo. During the Civil War period, he published several theoretical economic works, including the popular primer The ABC of Communism (with Yevgeni Preobrazhensky, 1919), and the more academic Economics of the Transitional Period (1920) and Historical Materialism (1921).

By 1921, he changed his position and accepted Lenin's emphasis on the survival and strengthening of the Soviet state as the bastion of the future world revolution. He became the foremost supporter of the New Economic Policy (NEP), to which he was to tie his political fortunes. Considered by the Left Communists as a retreat from socialist policies, NEP reintroduced money, allowed private ownership and capitalistic practices in agriculture, retail trade, and light industry while the state retained the control of heavy industry. While some have criticized Bukharin for this apparent U-turn, his change of emphasis can be partially explained by the necessity for peace and stability following seven years of war in Russia, and the failure of Communist Revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe, which ended the prospect of worldwide revolution.