Trotsky and Bukharin

[Illegalitarian]

Why did it take so many years for the USSR to "rehabilitate" Bukharin, and why did it never even bother with Trotsky? Seems like, if the purpose of rehabilitation was to drag the old regime through the mud in order to bolster the legitimacy of the new regime, these would be the two to revisit the most.

[Blake's Baby]

Hmm, a half-formed answer comes into my head, I can't quite grasp it, it's something like 'that was never the purpose of the rehabilitations'.

[Illegalitarian]

It kind of objectively was, at least, it started out that way

Regardless, why did it take so long to rehabilitate the latter and why was the former never rehabilitated?

[Blake's Baby]

It really wasn't. You question is flawed. You assume something, can't find evidence to fit and say, 'I don't understand'. Of course you don't, your assumption is wrong.

Bukharin was always read by the apparatchiks. They couldn't get away from the fact that Lenin had said he was the most able Bolshevik theoretician. I suspect that Stalin's cronies found it a bit embarrassing that he'd had Bukharin executed.

When historical development falsified so much of the pointless dross that Stalin had vomitted out, the bureaucracy needed someone else - preferably someone with good Bolshevik pedigree - to provide theoretical justifications for whatever convolutions of policy was coming next. Bukharin in his time (started as a Left Communist, ended on the right of the party) theorised just about everything (including Socialism in One Country) and could therefore be used to justify just about anything. Bukharin was rehabilitated so the twists of the CPSU's policy could be justified by reference to holy texts, through the admission that maybe 'mistakes were made' and the repression of some Old Bolsheviks was an error. It had nothing to do with 'making the old regime look bad'. They were trying as hard as they could not to make the 'old regime' look bad, as all those fuckers were complicit in exactly how bad the 'old regime' was. Not that there was a singular 'old regime' from the time of Stalin through Krushchev and Breshnev to Gorbachev though.

In other words the rehabilitation of Bukharin was an attempt to save Stalinism not to bury it. Trotsky, a step (many steps) too far though.

[Dave B]

I think Stalin went after Trotsky first; but I don’t think it really had anything to do with political positions etc but was just a matter of personalities, clashes of ego’s , popularity and there only being room for one big brother.

Once Snowball was chased off the farm he slowly became the focal point for ‘non-Menshevik’ and non-Kautskyist’ disillusioned Bolsheviks and the bête noir, and Emmanuel Goldstien hate figure for Stalinist ‘communists’.

Or in other words the figurehead for people who thought everything was OK until things started to go ‘obviously’ wrong after 1925 ish?

As a libertarian communist, and I am really not trying to just wind Trotskyists up, I think Trotsky was the original Stalinist theoretician in non abstract and real issues ie his much under read Terrorism and Communism and ‘Militarisation of Labour’ etc

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/military/ch06.htm

Bukharin was just next on Stalin’s list as a more bookish and, if you like ‘sincere’ theoretician, rather than a contender for autocratic leadership.

Bukharin uncritically accommodated himself to the Stalinist model of, as far as I am concerned, Stalin’s police state.

And played an important part in the international arena in providing an intellectual credibility and justification for general political repression etc.

Of course even Bukharin is, or was hazardous, reading for orthodox Bolsheviks.

There is a standard book/text on Bukharin by ‘Stephen Cohen’ or something; it is astonishing!

They way it ‘deals’, or doesn’t, with Bukharins early actual objection to Lenin’s programme of state capitalism could teach our manufacturers of consent Fox News many lessons on omission and selective presentation of ‘information’.

I also read a Phd thesis on Bukharin.

[I have found Phd theses a really useful and under utilised resource in general research but mainly scientific and you can find lots of them helpfully posted on the internet.]

Assuming that this guy had actually read quite a lot of original Bukharin material the whole thing must have been deliberate fraud; you only had to flip back a couple of paragraphs away from some of his own quotations to establish that.

As with Ed Grant in his leftwing childishness citation in his refutation of state capitalism theory

[Illegalitarian]

It really wasn't. You question is flawed. You assume something, can't find evidence to fit and say, 'I don't understand'. Of course you don't, your assumption is wrong.

Bukharin was always read by the apparatchiks. They couldn't get away from the fact that Lenin had said he was the most able Bolshevik theoretician. I suspect that Stalin's cronies found it a bit embarrassing that he'd had Bukharin executed.

When historical development falsified so much of the pointless dross that Stalin had vomitted out, the bureaucracy needed someone else - preferably someone with good Bolshevik pedigree - to provide theoretical justifications for whatever convolutions of policy was coming next. Bukharin in his time (started as a Left Communist, ended on the right of the party) theorised just about everything (including Socialism in One Country) and could therefore be used to justify just about anything. Bukharin was rehabilitated so the twists of the CPSU's policy could be justified by reference to holy texts, through the admission that maybe 'mistakes were made' and the repression of some Old Bolsheviks was an error. It had nothing to do with 'making the old regime look bad'. They were trying as hard as they could not to make the 'old regime' look bad, as all those fuckers were complicit in exactly how bad the 'old regime' was. Not that there was a singular 'old regime' from the time of Stalin through Krushchev and Breshnev to Gorbachev though.

In other words the rehabilitation of Bukharin was an attempt to save Stalinism not to bury it. Trotsky, a step (many steps) too far though.

He wasn't rehabilitated until almost 50 years after he died, less than three years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Bukharin certainly was a writer, but at that point, do you really think the government rehabilitated him to what, justify the possibility of dismantlement?

[Blake's Baby]

There you go, making assumptions again. You assume that Gorbachev meant to dismantle the SU. I guess it comes from thinking that all good things are the result of the actions of great men that bad things must be the results of the actions of terrible men.

Gorbachev was trying to save the Soviet Union. He failed. Until you realise that, you're not going to get very far in understanding what happened.

If Gorbachev (or Krushchev or anyone else) wanted to discredit Stalin at any time after 1953, what better way than to rehabilitate those Stalin had excecuted (Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev even) in order to justify their 'revisionism' or whatever? There's plenty to go on. It's almost like they didn't want to discredit Stalin, amazing as that may seem - unless of course one accepts that the point wasn't to discredit Stalin and Stalinism, but to find justifications for their desperate search for policies that would stave of complete collapse.

Of course, that would mean you admitting that the Soviet Union even before 1985 was a bankrupt shithole and not some finely-chisled and broad-thewed workers' paradise, wouldn't it?

[Destroyer of Illusions]

The essence of khrushchevism is a wish of the bureaucracy to be above the low, the hatred of the bureaucracy to any control over it.The myth of "unjustified repressions" and "innocent victims of personality cult" was necessary for a justification of certain "security guarantees" for the bureaucracy. After a propaganda campaign of high-profile reabilitations that shocked the Soviet society was adopted a law wich in fact made impossible a persecution of representatives of the bureaucracy.

Gorbachevism is a dismantling of the Soviet system by the worst part of the bureaucracy. He was accompanied by a propaganda campaign wich step by step flowed into open anticommunist histerya.At this time the most odious figures like Bukharin were declared "innocent".

[Illegalitarian]

There you go, making assumptions again. You assume that Gorbachev meant to dismantle the SU. I guess it comes from thinking that all good things are the result of the actions of great men that bad things must be the results of the actions of terrible men.

Gorbachev was trying to save the Soviet Union. He failed. Until you realise that, you're not going to get very far in understanding what happened.

If Gorbachev (or Krushchev or anyone else) wanted to discredit Stalin at any time after 1953, what better way than to rehabilitate those Stalin had excecuted (Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev even) in order to justify their 'revisionism' or whatever? There's plenty to go on. It's almost like they didn't want to discredit Stalin, amazing as that may seem - unless of course one accepts that the point wasn't to discredit Stalin and Stalinism, but to find justifications for their desperate search for policies that would stave of complete collapse.

Of course, that would mean you admitting that the Soviet Union even before 1985 was a bankrupt shithole and not some finely-chisled and broad-thewed workers' paradise, wouldn't it?

Haha ok settle down there Bordiga, these aren't the Stalinoids you're looking for. Of course Gorbachev was trying to save the USSR, he wanted to honor the referendum.

I'm just saying this line of reasoning makes literally no sense. What policies were Gorbachev instituting in 88 that could possibly be justified in the works of Bukharin?

[Blake's Baby]

Bukharin could be used to justify literally almost anything. Any policy that the apparatchiks adopted could be justified from some bit of Bukharin because Bukharin between 1915-1925 was all over the place. Less state control of the economy? Bukharin theorised that. Greater state control of the economy? Bukharin theorised that. Greater industrialisation? Freeing restrictions on the peasantry? More access to consumables? Bukharin could be seen as supporting any or all of them at some point.

I've gotten rid of a lot of the Sovietology I once had (I know, books, huh?) so I can no longer go and look at sources directly. I shall try to dig out references to specifics from various places but I can't do it today.

[John Nada]

Why did it take so many years for the USSR to "rehabilitate" Bukharin, and why did it never even bother with Trotsky? Seems like, if the purpose of rehabilitation was to drag the old regime through the mud in order to bolster the legitimacy of the new regime, these would be the two to revisit the most.They were killed in a different manner. Bukharin was tried and executed in the Soviet Union. Trotsky was assassinated on foreign soil in a NKVD operation. Naturally killing someone in another country is going to be more politically sensitive.

Bukharin was rehabilitated on what would've been his hundredth year, fifty years after his execution. It was his wife who lobbied for his rehabilitation for decades. Whether it had some deep meaning or was just part of a bureaucratic process, I don't know.

And I'd swear that Gorbachev was intentionally trying to drive the USSR into the ground. At least Deng knew what he was doing, the CIA couldn't pay Gorbachev enough for what he did.:lol: He's like the Soviet equivalent of a cross between Mexican President Santa Anna and President James Buchanan with the Confederacy winning the American Civil War.

[Illegalitarian]

They were killed in a different manner. Bukharin was tried and executed in the Soviet Union. Trotsky was assassinated on foreign soil in a NKVD operation. Naturally killing someone in another country is going to be more politically sensitive.

Bukharin was rehabilitated on what would've been his hundredth year, fifty years after his execution. It was his wife who lobbied for his rehabilitation for decades. Whether it had some deep meaning or was just part of a bureaucratic process, I don't know.

And I'd swear that Gorbachev was intentionally trying to drive the USSR into the ground. At least Deng knew what he was doing, the CIA couldn't pay Gorbachev enough for what he did.:lol: He's like the Soviet equivalent of a cross between Mexican President Santa Anna and President James Buchanan with the Confederacy winning the American Civil War.

It makes sense that this issue may have gotten lost in the bureaucratic process over the years. Or hell, maybe someone in the nomenklatura was a fan.

Your answer about Trotsky makes sense too, but it raises another question, why the hell did they even assassinate Trotsky? What harm could he have possibly done, an old man in Mexico? It's hard to believe that it was just some ego trip for Stalin, even if that may not be out of character.