Carl: You wrote:
“But for Bukharin, GF, someone I and many others think highly of (although perhaps not so many in this forum), it was indeed a capital case.”
You ought not to “think highly of” this truly revolting person, Bukharin. Bukharin is not worthy of your respect, or that of any decent person.
Read our research on Bukharin, and Bukharin’s testimony at the 1938 Moscow Trial. Bukharin was a very dishonest, unprincipled person.
Getty has some good, and unflattering, things to say about him too, in that book Mike recommended to you, _Road to Terror_.
You wrote:
“You may write histories to your heart’s content. Those of us who are organizers think differently about the prospect of a bullet in the back of the head after a trial by former comrades..”
If you read that research you will see that we have evidence from outside the USSR that, for example, Bukharin was conspiring with his clandestine faction to assassinate Stalin as early as 1928.
This evidence has been available since 1971. Stephen Cohen’s 1973 biography of Bukharin cites that source — but conceals this particular piece of evidence from his readers, omitting it from his book, deliberately deceiving his readers.
Vladimir Bobrov and I have an article on Cohen’s book in the upcoming issue of _Cultural Logic_ (it’s already been published in our latest Russian book).
Cohen’s book is both incompetent and deliberately dishonest.
You continue:
“… later deemed flawed by the government that did it.”
No, it was not, and you must know it was not.
Gorbachev et al. were to the Right of Ronald Reagan, super anticommunists — and big-time liars too.
Gorby and Eltsin made possible the privatization of the collectively produced wealth of the USSR and the radical impoverishment of its working class. This has been termed “the greatest theft of the 20th century” — though IMO it was the greatest theft in world history.
Some years ago I discovered, in a little-known archive, the “rehabilitation report” on Bukharin by Gorbachev’s Soviet Supreme Court. This document is still top-secret inside Russia today.
Vladimir and I published it, along with an article about it. In that article we point out that the Soviet Supreme Court _lied_, big-time. The Court quoted from a document that, in fact, is the strongest evidence of Bukharin’s _guilt_. But they quoted selectively, to cite it as evidence of his innocence.
There was no way to know that until (a) the document from which they quoted was published in 2006, in a collection of documents from former Soviet archives; and (b) I discovered the Bukharin “rehabilitation” report in that archive.
This article is also in our latest (Russian) book. We hope to publish it in English before too long.
Read our research. We point out that Gorbachev’s Politburo commission searched all 250 volumes of the Bukharin investigative materials, looking desperately for any evidence that Bukharin was framed, that he was innocent.
They found none, nothing. That’s excellent evidence that no evidence vindicating Bukharin exists.
You wrote:
“As Mao once quipped, don’t be too quick to cut off heads, since history shows it’s not so easy to put them back on.”
Bukharin was used by Gorbachev to demonize Stalin.
But why demonize Stalin? To justify the world-class privatization and theft!
Gorby used Bukharin as an excuse to say: “Let’s revert to ‘Lenin’s’ way — to the NEP. Let’s increase the role of the market — which, as we all know, is the only road to ‘freedom’”.
To say that Gorby and all his academic minions lied, big-time, and about everything, is simply to gild the lily. OF COURSE they lied about everything!
Of course they lied about Stalin! All the anti-working class, pro-capitalist “reforms” were justified in the name of “anti-Stalinism.”
This is still going on, and accounts for the continued falsification of the Stalin period in the “mainstream”, “respectable” historiography. To say nothing of the Trotskyists.
Back to Cohen: Cohen concluded over 15 years ago that Bukharin was NOT tortured, could not have been. And Cohen is the world’s biggest Bukharin supporter!
As Getty shows in that book Mike E. recommended, Stalin was very partial towards Bukharin. But Bukharin was beyond dishonest, a real back-stabber, thoroughly unprincipled — and a plotter of assassination and sabotage on top of it all.
They just don’t get worse than Bukharin!
We have all been force-fed a bunch of lies about the Stalin period, and about this supposed “good guy” Bukharin, for decades. Some of us will never get past these lies.
Well, too bad for us if we can’t! New generations are coming up. They are not stuck in the anticommunist lies of the past, in the “cults” of Trotsky and Bukharin.
I find that most younger people want to know the truth! So do I. “The truth shall make us free.”
But we will never, ever get to that truth by remaining stuck in the lies of the past — including mainly, for present purposes, all the lies about Stalin, “Stalinism”, “frameups”, and so on.
Read the research! Study the evidence! Anyone who does this, and makes an attempt to be objective, will have no difficulty seeing the truth.
We have all been taught complete crap, lies and virtually NOTHING BUT lies, about Soviet history, for decades. PAST time to realize this, and do something about it.
Like Marx, Lenin, and Mao, Stalin was OUR guy, one of the heroes of OUR movement! One of the great ones, in fact.
Did Stalin make mistakes? Did Marx, Lenin, Mao? Does a bear shit in the woods?
OF COURSE they made mistakes! They also did a great many things that were RIGHT! Things we should imitate today.
But to learn from the mistakes, as well as from what they did that was right, we have to have the courage, and take the trouble, to study the evidence and look the truth squarely in the eye.
The Espresso Stalinist 