One possible answer is suggested in the part of Bukharin's courtroom testimony describing his imprisonment. "For three months I refused to say anything Then I began to testify. Why? Because while in prison I made a re-evaluation of
my entire past. For when you asked yourself: 'If you must die, what are you dying for?' — an absolute black vacuity suddenly rises before you with startling vividness." (quoted in Roy Medvedev,
Nikolai Bukharin: The Last Years,
An examination of one's life, the
"entire past," would obviously begin with childhood. Initial thoughts and recollections may have led Bukharin to realize that he had a great deal to say about his early life, the people close to him, and the Russia of those years.
Of course, had Bukharin been allowed to live longer, the story - if it had been written at all - may well have advanced into Kolya's adolescence, or
Perhaps, too, a man anticipating his extermination, staring at "an absolute black vacuity," would need to push back the void by writing. Understandably, the psychology of death produced a book
The very act of writing would have been a necessary relief from unbearable tension. Bukharin's widow, Anna Larina, described him as a man whose "nervous temperament was surprisingly delicate — pathologically taut, I would say... his nature, exceptionally sensitive and alive, could not bear nervous overloads, for its tolerance was unbelievably slight, and the emotional strings would snap... these very traits would plunge him at times into a state of hysteria... And intense experiences could physically incapacitate Nikolai Ivanovich" (This I Cannot Forget, pp. 126-7.)
Larina's impressions, it should be emphasized, are based on observations of Bukharin before he was imprisoned for a year, awaiting trial and execution. Later in her memoir, after Larina herself had been forced to endure prison and interrogation, she explained why she needed to find solace in writing: only way to distract myself was the old recourse of composing verses... writing poetry, however talentless, was my salvation" (p.224.) Larina's husband may have felt an even greater need for some kind of personal "salvation."
Bukharin may have found that the very act of writing his novel served as a kind of oblique political statement defying the NKVD and Stalin, a balance to the obsequious script that Bukharin's interrogators demanded he rehearse for
Another Marxist imprisoned by Stalin for his oppositional views, Victor Serge, gave the following account of his personal and political struggle: "I write, I write. I must create, work in order not to go mad, in order to fulfil my task here on earth; to be useful, to leave behind me a little emotion and thought. To work is to resist. For there is a soul in all work." (From Lenin to Stalin, pp. 75-76).
Bukharin must have discovered for himself the truth of these words. Writing may only have offered existential resistance, psychological affirmation of life against death, but it was resistance, none-
Stalin never replied...
Certainly, Bukharin could have maintained little hope for life or freedom for himself, though in numerous letters he tried to show how he might be useful to
Stalin, explaining why it would be in
Stalin's interest to allow him to live.
There is no indication that the General
Secretary ever responded to his former
Bukharin also bargained for the safety of his family, unaware that his wife had already been arrested and sent to a detention camp and his infant son placed in an orphanage. He had little choice but to believe in NKVD promises
Anna Larina thought her husband "overly trusting" and even "gullible" in regard to Stalin (pp. 289-290). Naturally,
Bukharin may have wished for a reprieve or hoped to suffer only some lesser penalty, but in reality nothing in Stalin's character was unknown to Bukharin.
In notes of a secret dialogue in July, 1928 with Lev Kamenev, a leader of the Left Opposition, Bukharin reportedly said that "Stalin... is an unprincipled intriguer who subordinates everything to preservation of his own power... He has made concessions now, so that later he can cut our throats... The result of this will be a police conversation Bukharin characterized Stalin as "a Genghis Khan."
Kamenev's notes also describe Bukharin as "extremely upset. At times his lips twitch from nervousness. Sometimes he gives the impression of a man who knows he is doomed." (The full text of these notes can be found in the appendix of Leon Trotsky's, Challenge of the Left Opposition 1928-
Bukharin surely knew he would not be allowed to survive the latest of the Moscow Trials. Bukharin may not have fully understood Stalinism, but he understood Stalin. Conclusion
How It All Began deserves a wide readership, especially among socialists and students of history. While the work is fiction, at least in form, the story of the Petrov family can be read as a study of the conditions that created the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917.
The novel also contributes details and impressions about Bukharin, a memorable figure by any reckoning. It complementd the political biography by Stephen F. Cohen and the personal memoir by
More importantly, perhaps, this book yields the pleasures that readers seek in the best fiction and autobiography: the opportunity to view a life intimately from reviews * the inside and so come to know it well, thereby enlarging the reader's own knowledge and experience of the world
Bukharin's detailed personal recollections, his portraits of family, friends, and acquaintances, stimulates readers' own memories, if only by way of comparison. It is difficult to observe Bukharin's account of his childhood without trying to recollect and reconstruct one's own.
The result is that Bukharin's example invites his readers, while learning about him, to reflect upon their own lives, to prod their memories into discovery of dimly remembered or forgotten events. How It All Began encourages the selfunderstanding that readers hope to obtain from literature
"Revolution is the great devourer of men and character" said Trotsky. "It leads the brave to their destruction and destroys the souls of those who are less hardy."
When Trotsky wrote these words, he was recalling the civil war period and the Left Opposition's defeat in the inter-party struggle of the 1920s and the ignominious capitulation of former comrades. The Moscow Trials were still some years away, unimagined by anyone.
Even then, ten years before his execution, Bukharin spoke in prophetic metaphors, telling Lev Kamenev that Stalin lived for revenge and would "cut the throat" of his political opponents.
The final decade of Bukharin's life can be seen as a desperate attempt, sometimes heroic, sometimes compromised, to resist the terrible fate that Trotsky predicted.
Notwithstanding the abovementioned qualities, How It All Began above all testifies to Bukharin's struggle to salvage his soul, to score a personal triumph in the face of personal and political catastrophe, and to demonstrate that, as Hemingway would one day write, "A man can be defeated but not destroyed."
Bukharin was executed in 1938. But with the publication of this work he has won a partial, posthumous victory. *
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