Nikolai Bukharin

Bukharin (center) standing with Stalin in Red Square in 1929.

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (9 October 1888–15 March 1938) was an Old Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, and Marxist philosopher. He wrote multiple works which includes, with assistance from Yevgeni Preobrazhensky, the ABC of Communism.

After the October Revolution, he initially became a member of a left-communist opposition group with Preobrazhensky that supported Trotsky. During the New Economic Policy, he became a figure in the right-opposition. He formed an anti-party bloc with Alexei Rykov and Mikhail Tomsky. In early 1929, Bukharin confessed to Jules Humbert-Droz, a Swiss social democrat and a friend, that the bloc was forced to resort to terrorism in order to remove Stalin for the lack of public or Party support.