Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin ( 9 October 1888 - 15 March 1938) was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary; Soviet politician and prolific author on revolutionary theory.

As a young man; he spent six years in exile; working closely with fellow exiles Lenin and Trotsky. After the revolution of February 1917; he returned to Moscow; where his Bolshevik credentials earned him a high rank in the party; and after the October Revolution; he became editor of the party newspaper Pravda.

Within the bitterly divided Bolsheviks; his gradual move to the right; as a defender of the New Economic Policy (NEP); positioned him favourably as Stalin's chief ally; and together they ousted Trotsky; Zinoviev and Kamenev from the party leadership. From 1926 to 1929; Bukharin enjoyed great power as General Secretary of Comintern's executive committee. But Stalin's decision to proceed with collectivisation drove the two men apart; and Bukharin was expelled from the Politburo.

When the Great Purge began in 1936; Stalin looked for any pretext to liquidate his former allies and rivals for power; and some of Bukharin's letters; conversations and tapped phone-calls indicated disloyalty. Arrested in February 1937; he was charged with conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state and executed in March 1938; after a trial that alienated many Western communist sympathisers. Pictures From History