Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin - by Nicholas N Kozlov & Eric D Weitz (Hardcover)

About the Book

Both the Russian and Western press now recognize the importance of Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin as a Soviet historical figure. Fifty years after his execution in Stalinist Russia, Bukharin has been rehabilated by the Communist Party and invoked as the intellectual antecedent of Gorbachev. Challenging this view, contributors to this volume reevaluate the intellectual and political legacy of this Bolshevik revolutionary. They cover aspects of his thoughts and activities previously left unexplored or misinterpreted. They conclude that Bukharin's legacy is easily distorted when he is torn from his own political and historical context and appropriated for contemporary political movements.

Contributors to this Centenary Appraisal reexamine issues central to Bukharin's intellectual and political legacy: the social, economic, and political forms needed for transition from capitalism to socialism; the nature of the modern capitalist state; and the meaning of imperialism as a stage in the development of capitalist world economy. Also covered are his activities in the Communist International and his work in the history, philosophy, and politics of science.

Book Synopsis

Both the Russian and Western press now recognize the importance of Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin as a Soviet historical figure. Fifty years after his execution in Stalinist Russia, Bukharin has been rehabilated by the Communist Party and invoked as the intellectual antecedent of Gorbachev. Challenging this view, contributors to this volume reevaluate the intellectual and political legacy of this Bolshevik revolutionary. They cover aspects of his thoughts and activities previously left unexplored or misinterpreted. They conclude that Bukharin's legacy is easily distorted when he is torn from his own political and historical context and appropriated for contemporary political movements.

Contributors to this Centenary Appraisal reexamine issues central to Bukharin's intellectual and political legacy: the social, economic, and political forms needed for transition from capitalism to socialism; the nature of the modern capitalist state; and the meaning of imperialism as a stage in the development of capitalist world economy. Also covered are his activities in the Communist International and his work in the history, philosophy, and politics of science.

About the Author

NICHOLAS N. KOZLOV is a Ph.D. economist living in Sacramento, California. He specializes in comparative economic systems and Soviet economics, and has published in the Review of Radical Political Economics, the Journal of Contemporary History, and a collection of essays edited by Richard W. England, Economic Processes and Political Conflicts.

ERIC D. WEITZ is an Assistant Professor of History at St. Olaf College. He has written articles on German labor and social history that have appeared in the Journal of Modern History, Labor History, and Social Science History, and is at work on a book, From Social Democracy to Communism: The Emergence of Working-Class Radicalism in Germany, 1890-1933.