Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin: Reconsiderations on a 'neo-Narodnik litterateur'

Abstract

The work of Nikolai I. Bukharin is often similarly misrepresented by scholars of otherwise very different political inclinations. Many mainstream scholars sympathize with Bukhar-in's alleged "right deviation"; on the other hand, Trotskyists blame Bukharin for Stalinism. Both groups, each for different reasons, then seek to portray Bukharin as a social democrat rather than a Bolshevik. Common to both left and mainstream analyses is the avowal of a supposed theoretical and political "break" in Bukharin's thinking around 1921, during the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in Soviet Russia, a view which will be challenged here.

This paper additionally seeks to provide some examples of fairly serious distortions of Bukharin's thinking, and to rectify matters by recourse to the original texts. Hopefully, this will make Bukharin into something less of a strawperson, and will enable his own arguments to be realistically criticized as well as allowing the potentially flawed perspectives of his opponents to be brought to light. And finally, this paper will focus on some of the similarities in theoretical outlook between Bukharin and his adversaries among the Left Opposition. This approach will help to transcend the irresoluble "Left Opposition" vs "Socialism in One Country" polemic, and provide further support for the opinion that neither position could have offered an adequate solution to the industrialization debate because both were confined by the presuppositions of the NEP.