Re: Bukharin

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Very interesting post by John and Lou.  Personally I have no time for
Bukharin at all.  I had not read the letter before.  Is it genuine? I am
inclined to think it is.  The trial though and Bukharin's performance
retains an interest - especially I think Bukharin's use of the Hegelian
notion of the Unhappy Consciousness.


I think it was Deutscher who said that Bukharinism as a political current
represented the interests of the peasantry and when they ceased to exist as
a political force after collectivisation Bukharinism vanished. Cohen's book
though attemtps IMHO to make Bukharin into something like a EuroCommunist
avant la lettre.

There was predictably enough something of a pro-Bukharin current in the
Communist Party of Australia in the mid to late 70s.  Frank Hardy, novelist
and card carrying member, wrote a very bad novel The Dead Are Many based on
Bukharin.  There was a debate in 1975  between the Communist poet John
Manifold and a Euro leaning member of the Party here in Brisbane about the
book.  Manifold was pro-Stalin to the very end.  His last collection of
poems contained odes to Uncle Joe. Alas I was younger and stupider and more
sectarian then and I refused to attend the debate. So I missed an important
moment.

Back to Bukharin.  Some of the most interesting remarks I have read about
the Moscow trials were made by Menachem Begin - no stranger to the ways of
the Stalinist Secret Police. He believed that the chief means of torture
used on Bukharin would have been sleep deprivation. Leaves no marks and is
very effective it seems.

regards

Gary