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The Prison Poems of Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938), an original Bolshevik leader and a founder of the Soviet state, spent the last year of his life imprisoned by Stalin, awaiting a trial and eventual execution. Remarkably during that time, from March 1937 to March 1938, Bukharin wrote four book-length manuscripts by hand in his prison cell. Seventy years later, The Prison Poems is the last of the four prison manuscripts, which include How It All Began: The Prison Novel and Socialism and Its Culture, to be published, allowing readers to grasp Bukharin’s vision in its full extent.
Bukharin organized the nearly 180 poems in this volume, written from June to November 1937, into several series. One dealing with forerunners to the 1917 Russian Revolution and another focusing on the Russian Civil War contain commentary not found in the other prison manuscripts. The same is true of the “Lyrical Intermezzo” poems for and about Anna Larina, his young wife, from whom he was separated by his imprisonment.
This first English translation of Bukharin’s Prison Poems is a compelling read, evidencing the powerful intersection of politics and art.
Bukharin organized the nearly 180 poems in this volume, written from June to November 1937, into several series. One dealing with forerunners to the 1917 Russian Revolution and another focusing on the Russian Civil War contain commentary not found in the other prison manuscripts. The same is true of the “Lyrical Intermezzo” poems for and about Anna Larina, his young wife, from whom he was separated by his imprisonment.
This first English translation of Bukharin’s Prison Poems is a compelling read, evidencing the powerful intersection of politics and art.
- GenresPoetryNonfiction
572 pages, Unknown Binding
First published February 28, 2010
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About the author
Nikolai Bukharin
195 books67 followersNikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician, advocated gradual agricultural collectivization; after the last "show trial" of Moscow of the 1930s for treason, people executed him.
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, a Russian prolific author, wrote on theory.
As a young man, he spent six years in exile, worked closely with Vladimir Ilich Lenin and Leon Trotsky. After February 1917, he returned, his credentials earned him a high rank in the party, and after the October, he served as editor of Pravda, the newspaper.
Within the bitterly divide, his move to the right as a defender of the new economy, positioned him favorably as chief ally of Joseph Stalin, and from the party leadership, they together ousted Trotsky, Grigori Evseyevich Zinoviev, and Lev Borisovich Kamenev. From 1926, Bukharin enjoyed great power as general secretary of committee of Comintern to 1929. Nevertheless, decision of Stalin to proceed drove the two men apart, and the Politburo expelled Bukharin.
When the purges began in 1936, Joseph Stalin for pretext liquidated his former allies and rivals for power, and some letters, conversations, and tapped phone calls of Bukharin indicated disloyalty. People arrested him in February 1937, and charged conspiracy to overthrow the state. Proceedings alienated many western Communist sympathizers.
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, a Russian prolific author, wrote on theory.
As a young man, he spent six years in exile, worked closely with Vladimir Ilich Lenin and Leon Trotsky. After February 1917, he returned, his credentials earned him a high rank in the party, and after the October, he served as editor of Pravda, the newspaper.
Within the bitterly divide, his move to the right as a defender of the new economy, positioned him favorably as chief ally of Joseph Stalin, and from the party leadership, they together ousted Trotsky, Grigori Evseyevich Zinoviev, and Lev Borisovich Kamenev. From 1926, Bukharin enjoyed great power as general secretary of committee of Comintern to 1929. Nevertheless, decision of Stalin to proceed drove the two men apart, and the Politburo expelled Bukharin.
When the purges began in 1936, Joseph Stalin for pretext liquidated his former allies and rivals for power, and some letters, conversations, and tapped phone calls of Bukharin indicated disloyalty. People arrested him in February 1937, and charged conspiracy to overthrow the state. Proceedings alienated many western Communist sympathizers.
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August 12, 2012
A note to start reading "The Prison Poems of Nikolai Bukharin | Transformation of the World (Verse about the Ages, and About People."
Nikolai Bukharin in Russia's revolutionary and socialist history represented a potentially humane leadership alternative to the catastrophe of Stalinism. We will never know. An economist, a sportsman, an organizer, theoretician and now a poet, you can imagine that someone with such a broad political and cultural background would have created a different result from the ex-Soviet Union. In other words a revolutionary with culture and vision that was, could have been, different ended up in a Stalinist prison. Bukharin was defeated in political debates by Lenin, though not eliminated. After Stalin took power then through COINTELPRO-like tactics, infiltrated, smeared, hounded, isolated, caused divisions, and persecuted, murdered some and then imprisoned many leaders and members who may have thought that freedom of expression, debate, oppositions and differences were par for the course towards achieving some semblance of unity of action found out the hard way. The Stalin machine attacked Bukharin, imprisoned him, erased him from official history and faded from the scene.
Bukharin is probably only known by specialists, historians of the Bolsheviks and partisans of the long-faded communist movements. Even then only his writings, much less about is life and fate and even less so about his poetry. Now, in a 533 page book, the reader will find out that while imprisoned he wrote a cycle of poems dedicated to telling the stories and histories of revolutionaries and their revolutions, their battles, dreams and defeats. Bukharin, even as he was imprisoned and headed towards death, believed in the machine. Irony of ironies, to believe your executioner is your liberator, that good will overcome evil, that there must have been a big mix-up and in due time will be corrected. Subtitled "Transformation of the World (Verse about the Ages, and About People," Bukharin saw all the way to the edge of the first global darkness called fascism, -- and the impending wars -- writing from the other bank of the river of history called Stalinism. Bukharin's backbone is not promising; as I skimmed the pages I saw him write a poem on the "Stalin charter." Optimism and hope never perish? C|S
Nikolai Bukharin in Russia's revolutionary and socialist history represented a potentially humane leadership alternative to the catastrophe of Stalinism. We will never know. An economist, a sportsman, an organizer, theoretician and now a poet, you can imagine that someone with such a broad political and cultural background would have created a different result from the ex-Soviet Union. In other words a revolutionary with culture and vision that was, could have been, different ended up in a Stalinist prison. Bukharin was defeated in political debates by Lenin, though not eliminated. After Stalin took power then through COINTELPRO-like tactics, infiltrated, smeared, hounded, isolated, caused divisions, and persecuted, murdered some and then imprisoned many leaders and members who may have thought that freedom of expression, debate, oppositions and differences were par for the course towards achieving some semblance of unity of action found out the hard way. The Stalin machine attacked Bukharin, imprisoned him, erased him from official history and faded from the scene.
Bukharin is probably only known by specialists, historians of the Bolsheviks and partisans of the long-faded communist movements. Even then only his writings, much less about is life and fate and even less so about his poetry. Now, in a 533 page book, the reader will find out that while imprisoned he wrote a cycle of poems dedicated to telling the stories and histories of revolutionaries and their revolutions, their battles, dreams and defeats. Bukharin, even as he was imprisoned and headed towards death, believed in the machine. Irony of ironies, to believe your executioner is your liberator, that good will overcome evil, that there must have been a big mix-up and in due time will be corrected. Subtitled "Transformation of the World (Verse about the Ages, and About People," Bukharin saw all the way to the edge of the first global darkness called fascism, -- and the impending wars -- writing from the other bank of the river of history called Stalinism. Bukharin's backbone is not promising; as I skimmed the pages I saw him write a poem on the "Stalin charter." Optimism and hope never perish? C|S
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