25.11.1999

Time to forgive

Phil Sharpe reviews 'How It All Began' by Nikolai Bukharin (Columbia University Press, 1998, pp345, £13.95)

Bukharin is an enigma for many revolutionary Marxists. Before Lenin’s death Bukharin was a proletarian internationalist and intransigent supporter of world revolution, but he became the most sophisticated defender of socialism in one country, and was Stalin’s ally and opponent of Trotsky and the Left Opposition.

When Stalin split with Bukharin between 1929 and 1930, Trotsky was opposed to a united front with Bukharin versus Stalin because he considered Bukharin to be pro-kulak and an accommodator to pro-capitalist restorationist forces. This evaluation has generally been unquestioned within orthodox Trotskyist circles. To my knowledge only Richard Price has tentatively argued that a united front between Bukharin and the Left Opposition was possible and principled on the basis of upholding inner-party democracy.

Possibly the most plausible explanation of Bukharin’s changing theory and practice is outlined in the approach of the SWP. Bukharin was the theorist and defender of the degenerated workers’ state. On this basis he supported the New Economic Policy and the proletarian-peasant alliance, and was cautious about the prospects of world revolution, but he was serious about theory in contrast to Stalin’s expediency and pragmatism. Thus conflict developed between Stalin, the leader of the ascendant bureaucratic class, and Bukharin, the right centrist defender of the decaying workers’ state. Hence despite Bukharin’s vacillations in the struggle against Stalinism he was still a personification of Marxist theory and culture, and an opponent of Stalin’s attempt to destroy and suppress revolutionary Marxism.

In his useful introduction to Bukharin’s semi-autobiographical novel Stephen Cohen explains that the novel was one of four manuscripts written whilst Bukharin was in prison, and undergoing interrogation by Stalin’s secret police. The other three manuscripts tackle the issues of philosophy, politics and culture. The philosophical document seeks to address Lenin’s criticism that Bukharin had a non-dialectical approach, and is apparently an important addition to Marxist philosophy. Obviously this work should have been translated before the novel, but it has not been due to a post-modern indifference and hostility towards Marxist theory, and an increasing emphasis on the role of novels as a better expression of ideas (more expressive, flexible and non-disciplined) than philosophical works.

Nevertheless despite this complaint I have to agree with Cohen that Bukharin’s novel is a brilliant use of the genre in order to develop an analogy between tsarism and Stalinism at the level of culture, ideology, state repression and human behaviour. Bukharin uses his childhood experiences in order to show the brutal, banal, conformist, and bigoted nature of the tsarist state. Yet despite this suppression of the questioning, rational and enlightened aspects of the human spirit the potential for revolution constantly develops. No wonder Stalin put Bukharin’s novel in his vaults, thinking that it would never be read!

With regards to the quality of his novel, Bukharin’s vocabulary is impressive, and his descriptions of people and events is detailed and enthralling. His approach is probably summed up by the comment that, although life can be tragic and bewildering, it is possible to overcome problems and realise our childhood potential:

“Children, like grown-ups, have their superstitions, prejudices, heartfelt dreams, ideals, and unforgettable incidents in life, which are stored in the memory forever and which suddenly, at terrible or tragic moments in life, come swimming into consciousness, surprisingly vivid, in full detail, down to the wrinkles in somebody’s face or a spider’s web illuminated by the evening sun. The world of childhood is vast and multifarious. But with every day it grows bigger; the naive eyes of the child are wide open to everything; and with little souls devour with tremendous avidity all the colours and sounds, the light and the shade, and all new forms and objects as they make their way into the secret caverns of existence or stroll through its sunlit meadows and woods” (p41).

In the novel Bukharin outlines vivid descriptions of the agonies of developing adolescence, which involves intense feelings of love, jealousy and the desire to impress the opposite sex. The difficulties of childhood are summed up by the experience of learning about sex from our peers rather than our parents, and this leads Kolya (Bukharin) to develop an awkwardness in relations with girls. He does not trust his parents so much because they deceived him about the technical nature of sexual intercourse.

But Bukharin’s novel is not just about individual experience: rather he uses the individual narrative in order to develop an ideological approach. Progress is defined by the world of books, learning and opposition to prejudice, such as the need to oppose anti-semitism (is this an implicit call for unity with Trotsky?). Reaction is defined by crude behaviour, instrumental promiscuity, drunkenness, corruption, religious dogma, and prejudice (a reference to Stalin’s contempt for theory, and his regular drinking parties?).

Kolya outlines the sad decline of his father from being a humanitarian freethinker who changes into a conformist. This is connected to regular drinking parties that are used to impress local dignitaries. But this intellectual decline is also theoretical. Kolya knows that it is necessary to go beyond his father’s humanitarian liberalism in order to be consistently critical of religion and support science. In this context Kolya refers to the importance of Hegel, dialectics and philosophy as being necessary for challenging reactionary ideas (an acknowledgement that Lenin is right about the significance of Hegel and dialectics?).

Bukharin’s novel has a starting point that emphasises the importance of intellectual freedom. A dispute occurs between the headteacher of Kolya’s school and Ivan Antonych, who is Kolya’s father. Ivan is essentially protesting against ignorant and nihilistic authority. The headteacher is a bully who beats his son and represses his cultured and sensitive wife (Stalin’s tragic wife who commits suicide in the early 1930s?). Ivan is forced out his job as a teacher and has to become a provincial tax inspector, and despite his efforts to ingratiate himself with local dignitaries he also loses this job because he is “soft on the Jews” (p103). Bukharin seems to be making an analogy between the reactionary racist ideology of tsarism and that of Stalinism, and commenting on the connected denial of diversity, pluralism and political freedom.

Whilst in the Russian provinces Kolya observes the misery and poverty of the peasants, and so he starts to develop a social conscience. This terrible situation seems to represent an analogy with the misery brought about by forced collectivisation. Through describing the poverty of the peasants in vivid detail, Bukharin is able to show how Kolya interprets social reality in terms of the division between rich and poor. However, it is Kolya’s intellectual development which allows him to redefine the conflict between rich and poor in historical materialist terms of the class struggle. Kolya also learns from his experience to distrust liberalism as an elitist attempt to uphold feudal domination, whilst claiming to want to improve the conditions of the peasantry. In general terms Bukharin’s references to nature and the countryside suggest the importance of using but not exploiting resources, and above all the need to work with and not exploit the peasants who know the land.

The unemployment of Kolya’s father results in the family going back to Moscow. Kolya now has greater access to public libraries and his diverse reading of literature, religious works and philosophy helps to consolidate his process of radicalisation. In various visits to art galleries Kolya is fascinated by the insanity of Ivan the Terrible (an obvious reference to Stalin). Bukharin also refers to the ideological importance Pushkin has for the tsarist state. The conflict between the tsarist state and Pushkin is glossed over in order to sanitise and celebrate the works of Pushkin. In other words, Stalin attempted to deny his growing conflict with Lenin so that Lenin can be utilised in order to bestow ideological legitimacy upon the reactionary system of Stalinism.

Kolya’s intellectual inspiration in analytical thinking is his best friend Tosya (Bogdanov?). Tosya is an invalid, and so his sole pleasure is reading. This means he has a high intellectual and cultural level, and he introduces Kolya to Marxism and scientific socialism. In contrast tsarism suppresses intellectuals like Tolstoy, and carries out anti-semitic pogroms. Furthermore Kolya is not allowed to establish a cultural school magazine, because it may become subversive. Even the circus is closed because of the reciting of subversive poetry by circus performers.

These observations about the anti-cultural and totalitarian character of tsarism have obvious comparisons with Stalinism.

Bukharin discusses whether experience or book learning is the best way to develop socialism and support working class struggle. He comes to the conclusion that theory and intellectual development is primary for the encouragement of class struggle. Thus in order to prepare for revolutionary class struggle it was necessary to develop ideological conflict with the aristocracy, feudalism, bourgeoisie, Narodniks, etc: “The great issues of life were resolved in advance as theoretical problems” (p191). Lenin (Ulyanov in the novel) was serious about defeating the arguments of opponents in order to create the ideological and political conditions for developing the revolutionary party.

Bukharin develops a brilliant reconstruction of the differences between revolutionary Marxists and Socialist Revolutionaries in order to show that he had not become a Narodnik and peasant socialist. Consequently he still upheld the working class as the primary revolutionary class and leader of the peasants in the struggle against tsarism and capitalism, and in the building of socialism. The problems in his dialogue are, firstly, that he upholds determinist historical inevitability against Narodnik subjective voluntarism, and, secondly, that he conceives of revolution in stageist terms - of bourgeois democratic revolution followed by socialist revolution. Thirdly, he does not adequately answer the Socialist Revolutionary view that Marxism leads to ideological conformity (barracks socialism) and the elitism of a party led by the bourgeois intelligentsia.

Bukharin repeats Lenin’s views outlined in What is to be done?,that the spontaneous consciousness of the working class is not revolutionary, but bourgeois. Yet he does not elaborate Lenin’s approach in the context of showing why the party does not necessarily have to degenerate into counterrevolutionary Stalinism and authoritarianism. Instead of developing an analysis against Stalinism Bukharin prefers to hint that multi-party democracy (the Narodnik and Bolshevik dialogue) shows how the revolutionary party can avoid becoming repressive. However, it could be argued that Bukharin is primarily concerned to show that theory is what is required in order to defeat Stalinism. Kolya is not able to understand Kant. In other words, it is necessary to learn philosophy in order to help solve problems about reality, including the problem of Stalinism.

Bukharin in his novel does seem to be self-critical about his support for Stalin in the mid-1920s. Firstly, he implies that Stalinism was always a form of anti-working class politics. He outlines the common aims of the tsar and kaiser for imperialist expansion, and the suppression of revolution and social democracy. This observation seems to represent a warning against the potential for a Hitler-Stalin alliance against the international working class. Furthermore, the development of police socialism by tsarism, in order to maintain state regulation of the proletariat, is virtually an explicit reference to Stalinism and its repression of the working class.

Secondly, in his description of the fragility and finality of human mortality, the uncertainty and changeability of the human condition, and Kolya’s sense of guilt about the death of a brother, Bukharin seems to refer to his own guilt about facilitating the triumph of Stalin and causing the death of the Bolshevik Party. Bukharin argues that he has no more belief in an omnipotent god (Stalin?), and the only way to establish real human love is through rejecting the false love of god.

In conclusion: Bukharin’s novel may not be as profound and elegant as the work of Gorky and other political Russian novelists, but, given the terrible conditions under which he had to construct it, it is a work of genius. Obviously Bukharin could not openly criticise Stalin in his novel, for that would have meant certain death for the rest of his family. However, there are enough implicit references to the reactionary nature of Stalinism to suggest that Bukharin died as an intransigent opponent of Stalinism.

It is time for Trotskyism to forgive him.

Phil Sharpe