RUSSIA: Bukharin Falls

“One of the first friends we found in New York was Bukharin who had just been expelled from Scandinavia. . . . He welcomed us with childish exuberance. Although the hour was late and we were fatigued from the journey Bukharin insisted on taking me and my wife to see the New York Library.”

The night was Jan. 14, 1917. The husband and wife were Mr. & Mrs. Lev Davidovich Trotsky. Exiles from Tsardom, they had crossed on the little Spanish steamer Montserrat to live with relatives in The Bronx, were anxious to get to bed. To The Bronx their friend Nicolai Ivanovich Bukharin took them, after showing off his precious Library. It was his gold mine, the dingy Golconda from which he was digging material for tome after ponderous tome, his monumental works on Capitalism and Communism.

March upset the Throne of Nicholas II. Kerensky’s power did not survive October. Before the turn of the new year Lenin and Trotsky were the Gods of Moscow, and Bukharin was their Prophet. He remained for eleven years—until only a few months ago—the most potent of Soviet editors and publicists. He watched Lenin die. He saw Trotsky exiled for a “Left Heresy” (TiME, Jan. 30, 1928), and as Editor of Pravda, foremost Red daily, gave his old friend many a parting editorial kick. He became the closest confidant, and was called the “brains” of Soviet Dictator Josef Stalin.

From Turkey, where he is now exiled, Trotsky wrote bitterly last summer:

“Bukharin is a vine that must always cling somewhere, must be always upheld and maintained by someone sturdier than himself. . . . After Lenin’s death, Bukharin became Stalin’s medium. . . . I hear from friends that he is passing through a new crisis now, and that new fluids, unknown to me, are penetrating him.” The “fluids” were diagnosed as those of a “Right Heresy” in Moscow last week by the Central Executive Committee of the Communist Party. It appeared that Comrade Bukharin had dared to say that some of Dictator Stalin’s policies are too radical much as Comrade Trotsky dared to say they were not radical enough and reaped exile for his pains. Last week Bukharin was not exiled, but he was expelled from the Politbureau or inner council of the Party.

After ousting Bukharin the Committee crushingly rebuked two suspected partakers in his heresy: Alexey Ivanovich Rykov, the puppet Prime Minister of the Soviet Union; and Mikhail Pavlovich Tomsky, onetime Chairman of the All-Union General Council of Trade Unions. Contrite to the point of tears, Comrades Rykov and Tomsky confessed that they had been “mistaken,” were allowed to remain in the Politbureau.

Part of the Bukharin heresy consisted in doubting that Dictator Josef Stalin can put through on time his 33-billion-dollar Pyatiletka (“Five Year Plan for Economic Development”) (TIME, June 18, 1928, et seq.}. Last week Pravda blared: “The five year plan! . . . We will put it through in three years and a half!”