Bukharin—History and Legend

Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888-1938, by Stephen F. Cohen. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 495 pp.

Among the fathers of the Great October Revolution, the brilliant and incisive L. D. Trotsky has long held the attention of the Western world. But more recently, interest in his works and in his person has been waning, while the amiable Nikolai I. Bukharin is now being studied as both a companion of Lenin and an ancestor of revisionism. An excellent biography by A. G. Lowy appeared in Vienna five years ago, and now a young Princeton professor comes forward with an ingenious thesis, thoroughly researched and gracefully written, which challenges the conventional view that Trotsky was the great riva...