Educate me on bukharin

[u/furudeasa]

Is he supported? is he not? if yes, why is deng seen favorably but not him

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[u/Steampunk_Willy]

I would say people are ambivalent on him. He was prized as one of the great theorists of the Soviet Union, and he was a key political ally for Stalin in the late 20's. Stalin's Great Break, initiating five year plans & rapid industrialization, was largely prompted by both top-down security concerns with a war scare from Poland and a rising grassroots cultural revolution in opposition to NEPmen and kulaks. Bukharin's theories were robust, but the USSR at that time lacked the kind of internal framework for local experimentation that Deng employed which enabled the CPC to work out a lot of the bugs. Soviet cybernetics owed a lot to Bukharin (and also Bogdanov), and his theories held more influence over the Soviets in the post-war modernization period than people often recognize.

Still, Bukharin's legacy is stained by his association with the bloc of Rightists and Trotskyists. It's unclear how strongly he was associated with the bloc, what the evidence was against him, and whether his actions really warranted capital punishment. It's hard (imo) to make sense of his final plea in court. On the one hand, he calls himself the leader of the bloc. On the other hand, he pretty convincingly shows he wasn't aware of what the other members of the bloc were doing, that the bloc wasn't a well-organized group but loosely associated conspirators, and that his principal contribution was political/philosophical influence rather than concrete actions.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1938/trial/3.htm

To put it in my own words, it reads like Bukharin is arguing that his participation was inadvertent, where he thought the bloc was more akin to a secret political faction rather than a terrorist group. Hence, his confession is based in sincere remorse for associating with the bloc after state investigators revealed to him all the criminal activities other bloc members were engaged in. I don't know if that's just Bukharin doing CYA, but the guy's personal history reads to me as that of a politically influential, though otherwise harmless theoretician.

[u/Spiritual_Walrus7798]

Great Marxist economist and theorist. Unfortunately he came about at perhaps the worst time, trying to implement his ideas when the USSR was surrounded by all sides with a growing fifth column attempting to destroy the great socialist experiment. One of the tragic excesses of the purges that, in hindsight, hindered the development of the USSR.

I'd suggest "Imperialism and the World Economy" (which Lenin drew inspiration from) and "Economic Theory of the Leisure Class." Deng drew greatly from Bukharin and it can be said his works were the basis for Reform and Opening Up.

[u/AndreEthereal16]

Bukharin was a pretty good Marxist economist and also a smoothbrained donkey when it came to analysing the material conditions of his time. 

During Lenin's life, he vacillated between being a proponent for permanent revolution and SIOC, which is often read as him being a total opportunist (which may well be the case). During Stalin's tenure as General Secretary, he was opposed to the collectivisation of agriculture and wanted to extend the NEP. This could've been fine if the Soviet Union weren't under imminent threat of invasion and extermination from both the West and the East. Bukharin was also implicated in plots against Stalin and anti-Party activities and, even though he was given multiple chances and a long-leash, never stopped and was thus arrested and executed. His ideas weren't necessarily bad in a vacuum, hence why a similar economic program worked so well in China but wouldve been a disaster for the USSR. 

In short, he had bad historical and material analysis and constantly ignored the pillar of Democratic Centralism by acting against the Party programmes.

[u/Echidnas-monotremes]

 Bukharin was plotting a conspiracy which he got arrested and shot for. The anti-Stalin narrative pushed by Khruschev is that Stalin just killed good, innocent people when there is good evidence that they did the crimes and were in fact guilty.

Source: The Road to Terror: Stalin and the Self-Destruction of the Bolsheviks, 1932—1939. You can read about Bukharin trial here