Nicolaevsky's contacts with Bukharin in Paris in 1936, when Bukharin was a member of a Soviet delegation seeking to purchase the archives of the German Social Democratic Party through Nicolaevsky. The negotiations required a number of meetings between the two men, during which Bukharin sometimes spoke freely about various matters. On one occasion he discussed his relations with Lenin during the latter's final illness, and Nicolaevsky's recollection of this conversation bears quotation:

His remarks about Lenin were particularly interesting, ...because Bukharin was so devoted to him. Even when he spoke about their disagreements—over the Malinovski case, for example-he did so in a tone of warmth and friendship.

This is what he told me about the final period of Lenin's illness. From various details in Bukharin's account, I gathered that he meant the early fall of 1922. "Lenin would summon me to come and see him," Bukharin said. "The doctors had forbidden him to speak lest he become upset. But when I arrived, he would immediately take me by the hand and lead me into the garden...." [to talk].

I asked Bukharin what the conversations had been about. He replied that he and Lenin spoke mostly about "leaderology," as we called it—that is, the problem of succession, of who was fit to be leader of the party after Lenin was gone. "This," said Bukharin, "is what worried and upset Lenin the most."

In this connection, he told me that the last articles of Lenin, Better Less but Better, about cooperatives and so forth, were only part of what Lenin had planned to do. He had wanted to put out another series of approximately the same number of articles which would give a complete picture of the future policy to be pursued. This was his principal goal.

Lenin's Testament consisted of two parts, a small part about the leaders, and a bigger one about policies. I asked Bukharin what the principle of Lenin's policy was. He said to me: "I have written two things about this policy, The Road to Socialism and the WorkerPeasant Alliance, and Lenin's Political Testament. The first is a pamphlet, which came out in 1925, the second was published in 1929." Bukharin asked me, “Do you remember those pamphlets?” I replied, “I confess I don't at present remember The Road to Socialism.”

"That is the more interesting one," he said. "When I wrote it, I included my conversations with Lenin about the articles already published and those not yet published. I tried in that pamphlet to keep to only what Lenin thought, to what he told me. Of course, they were not quotations; my understanding of what he meant was reflected in what I wrote. But it was my outline of Lenin's ideas as he expounded them to me. The main point of his testament was that it is possible to arrive at socialism without applying more force against the peasantry." The question concerned, of course, the treatment of the peasantry, which constituted 80 percent of the population of Russia. In the opinion of Lenin and of all Communists in general, it was possible to apply force against the peasantry at a given moment, yet this was not to be made a permanent method of treatment. This was the point of The Road to Socialism.

With Lenin's Political Testament, Bukharin said, it was a different matter. "There were big arguments about it, and I had to write only about what Lenin had already published. It was fundamentally the same

thing. But the first pamphlet went further and the ideas in it were more crystallized; it did not stop at what he had already written.”

I have reread these pamphlets and I see that Bukharin was quite right in presenting Lenin's ideas in this way. This was the way Lenin thought. And Lenin considered Bukharin the one most able to convey his thoughts. He spoke with him so that Bukharin would write what he himself had left unsaid."

Since Nicolaevsky's credibility permits no doubt, this revelation, formerly divulged only privately but now made public, provides compelling evidence that Lenin's views toward the end of his life have not been fully understood, and that there was a close and significant affinity between Lenin's and Bukharin's thought on the problem of building socialism in Russia. Thus, the account casts new light not only on the so-called "essential character" of Leninism and Bolshevism, but also on Bukharin's place in the history of Soviet communism as Lenin's heir and successor, and on Stalin's claim to direct Leninist descent-by which he imposed his views on the party from 1929 onward, forced Bukharin from power, and endowed his own program of socialist construction with the aura of Lenin's sanction and authority. A more accurate characterization of "Leninism" than that generally encountered in the existing literature produced in the West would be that it was not a rigid, consistent system, but rather one that was in the process of evolution and change, as Lenin and his followers, in response to numerous complex factors, vacillated between the extremes of the broad spectrum of Bolshevik ends and means. Accordingly, in the 1920's there was still a variety of "Bolshevisms" contending for predominance; only after 1929 was the issue resolved when Stalin diverted the broad stream into a narrow channel of his own making-and, at that, a channel which was shaped gradually throughout his rule, not all at once in 1929 as is often assumed.

trary, there was an ideologically coherent, untried, and consistently "Leninist" alternative to Stalinism available to the party-one that was however rejected for reasons that have yet to be more fully understood.

Secondly, it is clear that had Bukharin's policies rather than Stalin's prevailed after 1929, their political and social consequences would have been substantially different; indeed, the entire subsequent history of the Soviet Union-and of the 20thcentury world-might well have been radically altered.

Thirdly, Bukharin's theory of socialist construction is important not merely in a historical sense but in a crucial contemporary sense. Although his views were officially proscribed in the Soviet Union after 1929, they never lost currency among Communists in other countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, where problems similar to those confronting Russia in the 1920's arose after World War II. The desire of many East European Communist leaders to avoid the fate of Russia under Stalin, the attraction of "Bukharinism" as an alternative to the Stalinist model, and the appropriateness of Bukharin's views for conditions in Eastern Europe all resulted in a revival of his thought-clandestine while Stalin lived, but today more open-which can be identified in varying degrees with the current policies of the satellite states.

Whatever the ultimate impact of this revival, it is safe to surmise that it will be studiously ignored in the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that Stalin's successors have repudiated much of the Stalinist legacy, up to now they have evinced no intention of resurrecting Bukharin and restoring him to his

proper place in the annals of the Russian Revolution. Since 1962, when according to unconfirmed reports he was "judicially rehabilitated"—that is, posthumously exonerated of the charges of treason and murder for which he was tried and executed in 1938 -he is no longer referred to in official statements as a traitor and enemy of the state. But he is still characterized-when mentioned at all-as an "anti-party" opponent of Lenin and Stalin who throughout his career held heretical or misguided philosophical, economic, political, and revolutionary views. Soviet citizens have no access to his published works, while non-Soviet scholars are emphatically discouraged from attempts to pursue independent research on him. In short, it seems clear that insofar as Bukharin is concerned, the current leaders of the Soviet Union have not yet come to terms with their own past and will make no effort to right the historical record in the foreseeable future.

9

8 See Report of the Court Proceedings in the Case of the Moscow, Anti-Soviet "Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites". Peoples' Commissariat of Justice of the USSR, 1938.

a par

9 For example, in 1964 and again the following year the present writer was rejected by Soviet authorities as ticipant in the cultural exchange program between the US and USSR, after his selection for a period of research at Moscow University by the Inter-University Committee on Travel Grants. In 1966 unofficial efforts to obtain access for him to Soviet archival materials by a prominent American library curator with high-ranking connections in the Soviet Union also proved futile, both for the present and the foreseeable future. This American intermediary also reported that although Soviet of. ficials were embarrassed by the fact, even their own trusted historians have no access to Bukharin's voluminous published works, which were removed from library shelves in the USSR in 1938 at Stalin's orders and have never been returned since. Whether they were destroyed or simply stored away is not known.

By William Korey

A

major landmark in the early history of Bolshevik rule in Russia was the establishment of the Communist International, more commonly known as the Comintern. On March 2, 1919, a small and motley brand of delegates representing a variety of radical political parties gathered inside the snowswept walls of the Kremlin in Moscow to create the worldwide revolutionary organization that was expected to lead mankind to an "International Soviet Republic." Presiding over the meeting as he would over all its meetings until late 1926-was the Comintern's principal organizer, Grigori Zinoviev, a Bolshevik since the 1903 split in Russian Social Democracy, a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee since 1912, boss of the party organization in Petrograd, and most important, the closest comrade-in-arms of Lenin.

In the ten years that preceded the Bolshevik Revolution, an extraordinarily intimate relationship

Mr. Korey is a long-time student of Soviet affairs and a contributor to several scholarly journals. This article is based on a dissertation done for The Russian Institute of Columbia University (New York).

1

had developed between Lenin and Zinoviev. Together they had shared exile in Switzerland after 1907, collaborating there in editing Bolshevik newspapers, in producing an anti-war book that exerted a significant influence on the international Left movement, and in organizing the "Zimmerwald Left" in 1915. Together they rode in the sealed train that took them back to Russia in April 1917 following the collapse of the Tsarist regime, and together they went into hiding after the July uprising against the Provisional Government. An observer who witnessed Zinoviev's activities in Switzerland commented that he spent hours writing "everything that Lenin thought was required," be it "newspaper articles, circulars to party friends, resolutions, or brochures." "

2

Yet Zinoviev, who for ten years had shared and faithfully articulated Lenin's views, suddenly took issue with him on the eve of the October Revolution when Lenin proposed that the Bolsheviks forcibly

1 Sotsializm i voina, in G. Zinoviev, Sochineniia, Leningrad, 1925, Vol. V.

2 O. Blum, Russische Köpfe, Berlin, 1923, p. 109.

seize power. This episode Zinoviev would never live down. His enemies would taunt him with it; his conscience would impel him to apologize for it; and Lenin's "Testament" would make a specific and crucial reference to it. When closely examined, however, the disagreement provides valuable insight into the principal doctrinal assumptions upon which the Bolsheviks operated, as well as into the varying emphases which different personalities placed on these assumptions. Most important, it provides a key to the vicissitudes of Zinoviev's subsequent

career.

Teacher and Disciple

On October 11, 1917 (old style), just two weeks before the Bolshevik coup, Zinoviev joined Lev Kamenev, another veteran Bolshevik,3 in circulating to all the principal Bolshevik organizations a letter opposing the contemplated seizure of power which had been proposed by Lenin and voted, 10 to 2, by the Central Committee the day before. The core of the argument presented by Zinoviev and Kamenev had to do not with the ability of the Bolsheviks to seize power, but rather with their ability to hold it. The letter reiterated the fundamental assumption upon which Bolshevik strategy for the seizure of power in Russia had rested from the beginning:

countenance a socialist revolution: a Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia would immediately be followed by the intervention of the "entire bourgeois world"; Germany and England would end their conflict, enabling Germany to "succeed in reaching Petrograd." The second assumption was that the Bolsheviks could not rely on the support of the peasantry. The peasants, argued Zinoviev and Kamenev, are "much nearer to the bourgeoisie than to us," and a Bolshevik seizure of power would most likely throw the peasants "into the arms of Miliukov" and provoke a bourgeois counterrevolution "supported by the petty-bourgeois [i.e., peasant] democracy."

5

3 Lev B. Kamenev, like Zinoviev, was a longtime associate of Lenin, but he had already split with Lenin in March 1917 over the issue of national defense and had also challenged Lenin's "April Theses."

4 Zinoviev, Sochineniia, Vol. VII (1), pp. 548-51.

G. YE. ZINOVIEV

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dictions that plagued their revolutionary strategy for Russia. No conflict existed within their ranks as to the certainty of proletarian revolutions in the more advanced Western capitalist societies. In a major work written in 1915, Zinoviev had outlined Lenin's conception (based in part upon Marx's schemata) of the historical process that made world revolution inevitable." According to this conception, an "epoch of advanced capitalism" during 18901914 had brought into existence not only the technological prerequisites for socialism but also the essential conditions for revolution: deepening economic crisis and growing misery. It had also brought on World War I, which-as Zinoviev observed in another essay written in April 1917– made "the objective preconditions for the socialist revolution in the most advanced capitalist countries undoubtedly higher now than before the

...

8

Timing, then, was of the essence. Was October 1917 the appropiate moment to strike for power? Did conditions abroad offer clear-cut indications that revolutions would break out there in the wake of a Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia? "Upon the conduct" of the West European proletariat, particularly the German proletariat, Zinoviev had written in April 1917, "will depend, to a significant degree, the future fate of our movement." And it was precisely because he judged, in October, that the revolutionary situation in Europe was "not yet here" that he vigorously opposed Lenin's proposal to seize power. The revolutionary situation will come, he was certain, but until then-and notwithstanding the ripeness of revolutionary conditions inside Russia (about which he also had some doubts)-restraint was required.

The issue thus turned above all on an assessment

of the external situation, and ironically it was Zinoviev, rather than Lenin, who read the signs from abroad correctly. While Lenin pointed to mutiny in the German Navy and widespread disturbances in Italy as symptoms of the maturation of the revolutionary situation in Europe, Zinoviev sharply and, as later events proved, rightly demurred from this judgment. Profound concern spurred him and Kamenev to circulate their letter against the proposed seizure of power among so many party leaders that it finally fell into the hands of the editors of the non-party journal Novaia zhizn, who promptly disclosed its contents in their issue of October 17, a day after the Central Committee had reaffirmed its earlier decision by a vote of 19 to 2. The following day, Kamenev gave Novaia zhizn a statement denying that the Bolsheviks had set a precise date for the insurrection but affirming his and Zinoviev's opposition to "our party taking the initiative in any armed move in the immediate future." Kamenev's and Zinoviev's open dissent infuriated Lenin, who denounced the two "strikebreakers" and demanded that they be expelled from the party.

If

-f Zinoviev's estimate of revolutionary possibilities outside Russia was more accurate than Lenin's, events belied his judgment that the Bolsheviks would be incapable of holding onto power once they had seized it. It was not that he lacked a systematic and coherent strategy of revolution essentially Leninist in character, but simply that he was too doctrinaire and rigid in applying it. Leonard Schapiro has convincingly demonstrated that Lenin thought "more in terms of action than of theory,' and that as a consequence his "tactical policy often outstripped the comprehension of his followers." " This tactical policy, for one thing, was based upon a far more penetrating insight into the revolutionary possibilities within Russia, particularly among the peasants, than Zinoviev was capable of. Had the Bolsheviks followed the advice of Zinoviev, who was paralyzed by the fixed idea of the dependency of the revolution in backward Russian upon revolutions abroad, it is quite likely that there would have been no Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917.

To say that Zinoviev was too rigid in his application of Marxist doctrine does not, of course, mean

6 "Voina i krizis sotsializma," in Zinoviev, Sochineniia, Vol. VII (1).

7 Ibid., p. 69.

8 Ibid., p. 29.

9 L. Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy, Cambridge, 1966, p. 29.