Nikolai bukharin biography sample
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Martyred for Communism
April 15, 1937: It is late night or early morning—the prisoner has little sense of time. He uses the night to work feverishly on his writing, following days filled with interrogations and negotiations. He repositions himself periodically to take advantage of the dim light from a single, naked bulb. His small cell is littered with books and papers that he has wheedled from his captors. Tonight he has put aside work on a semiautobiographical novel to compose a letter to the person who controls his fate. He addresses the man warmly, assuring him that “there are no bad feelings despite [your] removing me from my surroundings and sending me here.”
The prisoner, nearing his fiftieth birthday, is small in stature; a prominent mustache and goatee divert attention from a hairline that began receding in youth. His hair is gray, with wisps of the original red. Periodically he paces his cell, then returns to his task.
His letter, addressed “Dear Koba,” rambles, runs on
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Spartacus Educational
Primary Sources
(1) In 1924 Nikolai Bukharin wrote an autobiography for The Granat Encyclopaedia of the Russian Revolution.
Emigration marked a new phase in my life, from which I benefited in three ways. Firstly, I lived with workers' families and spent whole days in libraries. If I had acquired my general knowledge and a quite detailed understanding of the agrarian question in Russia, it was undoubtedly the Western libraries that provided me with essential intellectual capital. Secondly, I met Lenin, who of course had an enormous influence on me. Thirdly, I learnt languages and gained practical experience of the labour movement.
(2) Nikita Khrushchev, autobiography published in 1971.
I saw Bukharin speak in 1919 when I was serving in the Red Army. Everyone was very pleased with him, and I was absolutely spellbound. He had an appealing personality and a strong democratic spirit. Bukharin was also the editor of Pravda. He was the Party's chie
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Nikolai Bukharin (1924)
The Theory of Permanent Revolution
Source: Communist Review, Volume 5, no 10, February 1925, a monthly magazine published by the Communist Party of Great Britain. Scanned, prepared and annotated for the Marxist Internet Archive by Paul Flewers. Basic spelling errors have been corrected, and spellings of names have been changed to reflect the modern rendering.
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Introduction by Editor of the Communist Review
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, the author of the following article, was born in 1888. His father being a college professor, young Bukharin passed through the municipal school, and from there to the college where he finished his secondary studies. He next went to the Faculty for Law in the University of Moscow, and worked one year in the Faculty for Law in the University of Vienna.
Bukharin joined the Social-Democratic Party (Bolshevik) in 1906, at the age of 18 years, and from that time devoted all his energy to the service of the Party and o