Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution; A Political Biography, 1888-1938

New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good. xiv, [3], 495, [3] xvii, [3] pages. Minor wear and soiling to cover. Bookplate on fep. Pencil markings and comments noted throughout. Preface, Notes, Selected Bibliography, and Index. Chapters cover The Making of an Old Bolshevik; The Triumph of Radicalism in 1917; The Politics of Civil War; Marxist Theory and Bolshevik Policy: Bukharin's Historical Materialism; Rethinking Bolshevism; Bukharinism and the Road to Socialism; The Duumvirate: Bukharin as Co-Leader; The Crises of Moderation; The Fall of Bukharin and the Coming of Stalin's Revolution; The Last Bolshevik; and Epilogue: Bukharin and Bukharinism in History. Stephen Frand Cohen (November 25, 1938 - September 18, 2020) was an American scholar of Russian studies. His academic work concentrated on modern Russian history since the Bolshevik Revolution and Russia's relationship with the United States. In his first book, Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution, a biography of Nikolai Bukharin, a leading Bolshevik official and editor of Pravda, the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Cohen argued that Communism in the Soviet Union could have easily taken a different direction, not leading to Joseph Stalin's dictatorship and purges. Cohen wrote that it was possible for Bukharin to have succeeded Lenin and that the Soviet Union under Bukharin would have had greater openness, economic flexibility, and democracy. The book was widely praised, with economic historian Alec Nove describing it as 'the best book on the USSR to be published for many years'. This classic biography carefully traces Bukharin's rise to and fall from power, focusing particularly on the development of his theories and programmatic ideas during the critical period between Lenin's death in 1924 and the ascendancy of Stalin in 1929. Derived from a Kirkus review: Did Bukharin, the Bolshevik's leading theoretician who nonetheless fell afoul of Stalin's machinations, offer an alternative Socialism with a more human face? Cohen claims that he did. An intellectual intimately acquainted with non-Marxist social thought, Bukharin foresaw the advent of a new class 30 years ahead of Djilas, wished to promote intermediate associations as a defense against bureaucratic insensitivity, advocated reliance on the middle peasant and lenient treatment of the kulak, and favored a "dynamic economic equilibrium between industry and agriculture, and within the industrial sector itself." In disputing Lenin's judgment of Bukharin as a soft waxlike tablet, Cohen points out that he was an uncommitted "maverick" when abroad before the revolution, opposed the Treaty of Brest Litovsk (supporting guerrilla warfare against Imperial Germany instead), tried to be a "buffer" between Lenin and Trotsky when these two leaders disputed the role of the trade unions; his subservience during political prosecutions in fact reflected an attempt to protect his young disciples and his family and to appeal to history. Bukharin's soft line was more highly favored by the Party's rank and file than were Stalin's warfare tactics, but since Stalin had the support of the provincial hard-heads, Bukharin fell from favor following the grain crisis of 1929 although he did not lose all political influence until 1933. Cohen is perhaps a little hard on Stalin. A well-researched study of a subject which even Kremlinologists seldom write about.