“I Am the Last”—Memories of Bukharin in Paris

Abstract

recently published memoirs of Bukharin's widow radically challenge two classic sources on Soviet history: the of an Old Bolshevik, later revealed to have been based on Bukharin's conversations with Boris Nicolaevsky in Paris in 1936; and Lidia Dan's account of Bukharin's visit to her husband during the same period. Anna Mikhailovna Bukharina's accusations are so far reaching that they deserve careful examination.' Nikolai Bukharin, former head of the Comintern and the bolshevik to whom Lenin had referred as the favorite son of the party, arrived in Paris in March 1936. As leader of the defeated right opposition in the bolshevik party, Bukharin was no longer at the pinnacle of power. However, he was still the editor-in-chief of Izvestiia and his prestige as a bolshevik theoretician stood very high at home and abroad. purpose of his trip was to assist in the purchase of the Marx-Engels archive, held by exiled German Social Democrats and sought by Moscow. Representing the Germans was Boris Nicolaevsky, de facto curator of the archives, a noted historian and a member of the exiled Russian menshevik leadership. negotiations dragged on fruitlessly for two months. During that time Bukharin was joined in Paris by his young and pregnant bride (she was twenty-two at the time, twenty-six years younger than her husband) who has survived to now give us her nemnoirs. Within months of their return home, Bukharin was arrested and would soon be tried and shot. Madame Bukharina paid dearly for her brief period of conjugal happiness: she was separated from her infant son and spent over twenty years in prison and internal exile. The Letter of an Old Bolshevik, published anonymously in the menshevik emigre journal Sotsialisticheskii vestnik in December 1936 and January 1937, gives an insider's view of struggles at the top of the bolshevik party. It describes the 1932 oppositional Riutin Platform with its heavy criticism of Stalin; the growing importance of the Leningrad party chief, Sergei Kirov, whom it identifies with the conciliatory option under consideration in the Politburo; it dwells on the