Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin's Kremlin The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina

by Gregory, Paul R.

• ISBN13: 9780817910358
• ISBN10: 0817910352
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-04-01
• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press

Summary

InPolitics, Murder, and Love in Stalinrs"s Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina,Paul Gregory sheds light on how the worldrs"s first socialist state went terribly wrong and why it was likely to veer off course through the story of two of Stalinrs"s most prominent victims. A founding father of the Soviet Union at the age of twenty-nine, Nikolai Bukharin was the editor ofPravdaand an intimate of Leninrs"s exile. (Lenin later dubbed him "the favorite of the party.") But after Bukharin crossed swords with Stalin over their differing visions of the worldrs"s first socialist state, he paid the ultimate price with his life. His wife, Anna Larina, the stepdaughter of a high Bolshevik official, spent much of her life in prison camps and in exile after her husbandrs"s execution. Drawn from Hoover Institution archival documents, the story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina begins with the optimism of the socialist revolution and then turns into a dark saga of foreboding and terror as the game changes from political struggle to physical survival. Told for the most part in the words of the participants, it is, as Robert Conquest says in his foreword, "a story told to show the horrors of fate, of personal mistreatment and suffering by real people." It is also a story of courage and cowardice, strength and weakness, misplaced idealism, missed opportunities, bungling, and, above all, love.

Author Biography

Paul R. Gregory, a Hoover Institution research fellow, holds the Cullen Endowed Professorship in the Department of Economics at the University of Houston, Texas, and is a research professor at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin. He is also the chair of the International Advisory Board of the Kiev School of Economics. Gregory is the author of  Terror by Quota (2009), Lenin’s Brain and Other Tales from the Secret Soviet Archives (2008), and The Political Economy of Stalinism (2004), all based on his work in the Hoover Institution Archives. He has also coedited archival publications, such as the prize-winning seven-volume History of Stalin’s Gulag (2004) and the three-volume Stenograms of Meetings of the Politburo of the Central Committee (2007). His publications have been awarded the Hewett Book Prize and the J.M. Montias Prize. Gregory is the coeditor of the Yale-Hoover series on Stalin, Stalinism, and Cold War. He divides his time between Houston, Palo Alto, and Berlin.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Introduction	p. xv
April 15, 1937: A Plea from Prison	p. 1
March 15, 1938: A Husband Executed	p. 6
September 8, 1927: Digging His Own Grave	p. 9
1926: Stalin Plays an Unlikely Cupid	p. 14
Summer with Stalin (1927)	p. 16
June 1928: "You and I Are the Himalayas"	p. 19
July 4-12, 1928: Bukharin Fights Back	p. 22
Autumn 1928: Pity Not Me	p. 28
Autumn 1928: A Fifteen-Year-Old "Co-conspirator"	p. 30
January 23, 1929: "To a New Catastrophe with Closed Eyes"	p. 33
Early Warnings: Stalin Is Dangerous	p. 37
Father and Daughter as Bolshevik Idealists	p. 40
January 30, 1929: "You Can Test the Nerves of an Elephant, Bukhashka"	p. 44
Summer of 1934: A Second Fateful Meeting	p. 47
April 16-23, 1929: Waterloo	p. 49
1929-1931: The Woman on the Train	p. 58
August 1929: Removal from the Politburo	p. 61
New Year's Eve, 1929: Chastened Schoolboys Drop In on the Boss	p. 65
April 16, 1930: Bukharin Sinks to His Knees	p. 66
July 1930: With Anna in the Crimea	p. 67
October 14, 1930: Overtaken by "Insanities"	p. 70
January 27, 1934: Courtship, Bad Omens, and Marriage	p. 72
December 1, 1934: Kirov Is Shot	p. 75
August 23, 1936: Nadezhda Tries to Help	p. 77
April 25, 1935: Humiliating Editor Bukharin	p. 80
March-April 1936: Bukharin Opts to Stay and Fight	p. 83
August 27, 1936: What Accusers? They're Dead	p. 86
November 16, 1936: Bukharin Grovels	p. 90
December 4, 1936: Dress Rehearsal for Arrest	p. 92
December 1936-January 1937: Confrontations	p. 99
February 15, 1937: "I Will Begin a Hunger Strike"	p. 103
February 24, 1937: To a Future Generation	p. 109
February 24-25, 1937: On the Whipping Post	p. 110
February 27, 1937: For or Against the Death Penalty?	p. 116
February 27, 1937: Arrest Warrant for "Bukharin, N. I."	p. 119
February 27, 1937: Arrest and Parting	p. 121
February 1937: Anna Larina Is Betrayed	p. 123
April 1937: Impossible Dream	p. 125
June 2, 1937: Bukharin's Cagey Confession	p. 126
June 1937: Anna Meets a New Widow	p. 130
March 2-13, 1938: Twenty-one on Trial	p. 133
March 12, 1938: Papering over Bukharin's Final Defiance	p. 138
March 15, 1938: The Ultimate Payback: A Ghastly Death	p. 142
May 1938: Anna's Own Ordeal	p. 144
December 1938: Back from the Precipice	p. 146
Late December 1938: Advice from a Mass Murderer	p. 148
Summer of 1956: Reunion with Iura	p. 150
February 5, 1988: Rehabilitated by Old Men	p. 153
A Special (Specially Tardy) Delivery	p. 158
Bukharin, Stalin, and the Bolshevik Revolution	p. 160
Notes	p. 167
Cast of Characters	p. 179
About the Author	p. 185
Index	p. 187
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