Vladimir Tismaneanu - The Devil in History

Once Stalin’s close friend and supporter, ousted under charges of “right-wing deviation” in 1929 and reinstated into the Central Committee in 1934, Bukharin had been described by Lenin in his “Testament” as the party’s “favorite child.” 10He had bowed to Stalin’s supremacy and was in fact one of the authors of the 1936 Stalinist Constitution. The same year, Bukharin traveled to Paris to retrieve the Marx-Engels Archive from the exiled German social democrats. In spite of old friends’ warnings (among them veteran Mensheviks Fyodor Dan and Boris Nikolaevsky) that back in Moscow he would be arrested, Bukharin refused to remain abroad. He was imprisoned after the notorious February 1937 Central Committee Plenum when Stalin spelled out his theory of the sharpening of class struggle as the USSR advanced toward socialism. Bukharin was forced to publicly confess to surreal charges. However, he refused to acknowledge having participated in a plot to arrest Lenin in 1918. Stalin’s outstanding biographer, Robert C. Tucker, best describes Bukharin’s contradictory stance: “He pleaded guilty to ‘the sum total of the crimes committed by this counter-revolutionary organization,’ but thereupon suggested that not only did he not take part in but he even lacked knowledge of ‘any particular act’ involved.” 11

During the last days of his trial, Bukharin wrote a letter to Stalin. In it he claimed “personal intimacy” with the Soviet leader, actually reaffirming his unswerving faith in the party’s vision of social utopia and the Bolshevik revolutionary cause. Furthermore, this love for the party translated into an almost neurotic desire to reassure Stalin of his unbending dedication to the infallible leader himself. This document (which Stalin kept in his personal drawer until his death in March 1953) bears testimony to the mystical underpinnings of the Bolshevik belief system and its reverberations in the interpersonal relations within the top party elite. It is therefore worth quoting extensively from Bukharin’s letter:

This is perhaps the last letter I shall write to you before my death. That is why, though I am in prison, I ask you to permit me to write this letter without resorting to officialese [ofitsial’shchina] , all the more so since I am writing this letter to you alone: the very fact of its existence or nonexistence will remain entirely in your hands. I have come to the last page of my drama and perhaps of my very life. I agonize over whether I should pick up pen and paper—as I write this, I am shuddering all over from this quiet and from a thousand emotions stirring within me and I can hardly control myself. But precisely because I have so little time left, I want to take my leave of you in advance, before it’s too late, before my hand ceases to write, before my eyes close, while my brain somehow still functions…. Standing on the edge of a precipice, from which there is no return, I tell you on my word of honor, as I await my death, that I am innocent of those crimes which I admitted to at the investigation…. So at the Plenum I spoke the truth and nothing but the truth but no one believed me. And here now I speak the absolute truth: all these past years, I have been honestly and sincerely carrying out the party line and have learnt to cherish and love you wisely…. There is something great and bold about the political idea of a general purge. It is a) connected to the pre-war situation and b) connected with the transition to democracy. This purge encompassed 1) the guilty; 2) persons under suspicion; and 3) persons under potential suspicion. This business could not have been managed without you. Some are neutralized one way, others in another way, and the third group yet another way…. For God’s sake, don’t think that I am engaged here in reproaches, even in my inner thoughts. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know all too well that great plans, great ideas, and great interests take precedence over everything, and I know that it would be petty to place the question of my own person on a par with the universal-historical tasks resting, first and foremost, on your shoulders. But it is here that I feel my deepest agony and find myself facing my chief, agonizing paradox…. My head is giddy with confusion, and I feel like yelling at the top of my voice. I feel like pounding my head against the wall: for, in that case , I have become a cause for the death of others. What am I to do? What am I to do? Oh, Lord, if only there were some device which would have made it possible for you to see my soul flayed and reaped open! If only you could see how I am attached to you, body and soul…. Well, so much for “psychology”—forgive me. No angel will appear now to snatch Abraham’s sword from his hand. My fatal destiny shall be fulfilled… Iosif Vissarionovich! In me you have lost one of your most capable generals, one who is genuinely devoted to you… but I am preparing myself mentally to depart from this vale of tears, and there is nothing in me toward all of you, toward the party and the cause, but a great and boundless love. I am doing everything that is humanly possible and impossible…. I have written to you about all this. I have crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s. I have done all this in advance , since I have no idea at all what condition I shall be in tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, etc…. Being a neurasthenic I shall perhaps feel such universal apathy that I won’t be able even so much as to move my finger. But now, in spite of a headache and with tears in my eyes, I am writing. My conscience is clear before you now, Koba. I ask you one final time for your forgiveness (only in your heart, not otherwise). For that reason I embrace you in mind. Farewell forever and remember kindly your wretched. N. Bukharin 12

Bukharin’s letter can be taken at face value or with a grain of salt. He obviously was trying to save his young wife and child; the letter was a last desperate attempt in this sense. Such an argument does not, however, explain the exaltation in the letter. Bukharin died as a true believer committed to achieving Bolshevik utopia. Furthermore, it is still questionable if he perceived his death as a last service made to the party, as suggested by Koestler’s Darkness at Noon. Stephen E. Cohen, Bukharin’s quite empathetic biographer, considered that he wanted to protect “Bolshevism’s historical legacy by refuting the criminal indictment” rather than accepting it. 13Robert C. Tucker argued for a more nuanced reading of Bukharin’s transcript: “Bukharin thus had a twofold objective in the trial—to comply with Stalin by confessing and at the same time to turn the tables on him. He wants to make two trials in one.” According to Tucker, “there was an active effort on Bukharin’s part to transform the trial into an anti-trial. The fight he put up against Vyshinsky was entirely dedicated to this purpose.” 14Undoubtedly Bukharin, in his final public appearance, was trying to make a last political statement against Stalin and the system the latter had created. One should not forget that during a fateful meeting of the Central Committee on February 23, 1937, Bukharin warned Stalin that “I am not Zinoviev or Kamenev, and I will not tell lies about myself.” After this event, he wrote a letter entitled “To a Future Generation of Party Leaders,” which he asked his wife to memorize, in which he ominously noted, “I feel my helplessness before a hellish machine, which… has acquired gigantic power, fabricates organized slander, acts boldly and confidently.” He then accused Stalin: “By political terrorism, and by acts of torture on a scale hitherto unheard of, you have forced old Party members to make ‘depositions.’” 15