This dissertation examines the claims that Nikolai Bukharin was an inconsistent Marxist theoretician, at times un-Marxist in his thinking who radically altered his political philosophy to justify his support for such different policies as War Communism and the New Economic Policy. It also investigates the validity of the accepted wisdom that Bukharin represented a liberal alternative to Stalin and Stalinism within Bolshevism and that, by 1925, he had moved to the Right of the Party.
This study begins by examining the conflicting visions of the state and the evolutionary and revolutionary strains within Marxism. It then studies the works of those Marxist thinkers, of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose work on the state, revolution and the transition to socialism significantly influenced Bukharins work. Finally, it subjects Bukharins major theoretical works on imperialism, revolution and the role of the state in the transition to socialism, between 1915-1925, to an in-depth analysis to determine the validity of the claims made about Bukharin and his works.
While one can still argue that Bukharin may have acted differently from Stalin once in power, this dissertation demonstrates that Bukharin was consistent in his theoretical work on the revolution and the transition to socialism. This study also conclusively demonstrates that Bukharin was located within the heart of both Marxism and Bolshevism and did not move to the Right during the NEP. It clearly shows that Bukharins support for War Communism and the NEP flowed directly from his original synthesis of the revolutionary and evolutionary strains within Marxism, and the need for a powerful, proletarian state, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, that would manage the socialization of antagonistic petit-bourgeois elements into socialism, build socialism economically, and do whatever was necessary to protect the Revolution from its internal and external enemies. Thus, in reality, Bukharin, the liberal alternative, provided the philosophical foundation and justification for the use of unlimited state power, which in the hands of Stalin led to the Revolution from Above and from this perspective one can locate Bukharin as the philosophical interregnum between Lenin and Stalin.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-09172005-111150 |
| Date | 20 March 2006 |
| Creators | Novosel, Anthony S. |
| Contributors | Dr. Orysia Karapinka, Dr. William Chase, Dr. Jonathan Harris, Dr. Joseph White |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-09172005-111150/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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