Historical Materialism

'One of the true geniuses of the Russian Revolution" — Kevin Murphy, Jacobin


First published in 1921, this work by Nikolai Bukharin, a highly influential Marxist and Soviet Politician who would later become one of the most famous victims of Stalin's show trials, expands upon Karl Marx's theory of historical materialism.


Offering a Marxist interpretation of sociology, this edition is important not only from a sociological and economic perspective, but is also extremely valuable as a socio-historical document of contemporary thought in the Soviet Union in the years following the Bolshevik revolution.


'History would have turned out differently if Nikolai Bukharin, a key figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917, and his more progressive ideas had been at the center of Soviet society.' — The Washington Post


'Bukharin's analysis is still in advance of much contemporary discussion… Without a development of his arguments, albeit a critical one, the modern world cannot be understood.' — Michael Haynes, Nikolai Bukharin and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism


Praise
'It is Bukharin's ghost, the indelible memory of his post-Marxian philosophy and his remarkable prevision of the Nazi-Soviet rapprochement and the inevitable deterioration of Stalin's Russia into proto-Fascism, which remains to haunt the Communist world.' — The New York Times


'History would have turned out differently if Nikolai Bukharin, a key figure in the Russian Revolution of 1917, and his more progressive ideas had been at the center of Soviet society.' — The Washington Post


'Bukharin's analysis is still in advance of much contemporary discussion… Without a development of his arguments, albeit a critical one, the modern world cannot be understood.' — Michael Haynes, Nikolai Bukharin and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism


'The enduring body of Bukharin's works cast a lurid light over the Soviet regime which has emerged since the death of Stalin' — The New York Times


'One of the true geniuses of the Russian Revolution" — Kevin Murphy, Jacobin


'Bukharin is not only the party's most valuable and greatest theoretician but he is also rightfully considered the favorite of the whole party." — Vladimir Lenin, Last Testament: Letters to the Congress


'Bukharin, like Leon Trotsky, embodied the internationalist traditions of Soviet Communism before its descent into Stalinist chauvinism.' — Dr. Stephen F. Cohen


'Bukharin's unique importance in the history of Soviet Russia lies in the fact that he alone offered for that country a way forward radically opposed to the one adopted by Stalin.' Professor Leonard Schapiro, The New York Review of Books


About the author
Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (1888–1938) was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and author. Bukharin was an important Bolshevik revolutionary, and spent six years with Lenin and Trotsky in exile. He wrote prolifically on the subject of revolutionary theory. Initially a supporter of Joseph Stalin after Vladimir Lenin's death, he came to oppose a large number of Stalin's policies and was one of Stalin's most prominent victims during the “Moscow Trials” and purges of the Old Bolsheviks in the late 1930s.