Review: The Socialist Vision and the Silenced Voices of Democracy: New Perspectives – Nikolai Bukharin by Sobhanlal Datta Gupta

Seribaan, South 24 Parganas, 2019,pp xv+ 144, Rs. 495

The collapse of the USSR did not lead to a collapse of interest in Marxism, or in the actual class conflicts across the world. But it did mean that the Cold War certainties about what constituted Marxism, held by two sets of states, gave way to the possibility of Marxism resurfacing as a critical instrument. One part of that was of course the use of Marxist analysis to understand our contemporary world. The other part was a recovery of the wide spectrum within revolutionary Marxism that had been flattened into the correct line versus the class traitors and deviationists under Stalinism and its kin elsewhere. Sobhanlal Datta Gupta has been one of the few Indian scholars seriously engaged in that project, while accepting that the Russian revolution in its inception had been a popular and democratic revolution.

Datta Gupta has previously published a volume on Rosa Luxemburg in this series, which updates his earlier take on Luxemburg. He has also published the Ryutin Platform, the last attempt within the Central Committee of the CPSU(B) to resist Stalin. In this volume, he tries to do two things. On one hand, he attempts to present before a mainly Indian readership the fairly large amount of work done on Bukharin, especially since Stephen Cohen published his path breaking biography. On the other hand, he looks at the works and the ideas of Bukharin, trying to place the last period of his writings within the wider context of his evolution as a Marxist thinker after the Russian revolution, and focusing mainly on the issues of socialist construction, and culture and philosophy.

Datta Gupta correctly points out a major dimension that a study of Bukharin permits. Unlike many of the other figures whom Western Marxism has sought to appropriate, Bukharin was part of the Bolshevik leadership. This means that he had practical experience of the attempt to build socialism, and therefore, his views, his criticisms, have to be seen as an insider’s writings, and as writings that take practical issues seriously into account.

The study by Cohen had insisted that Bukharin represented lost ideas worth re-examining. In his rejoinder to Marcel Liebman’s review of his book, Cohen had argued that Bukharin represented, more than Trotsky, a set of alternatives. Datta Gupta’s study of Bikharin and the way he presents the recovery of Bukharin suggests a more complex picture. Bukharin shared with Lenin and Trotsky the vision of a working class revolution, the rule of the proletariat, and a transition to socialism through revolution. This was why Bukharin is not a forerunner of ‘market socialism’ (i.e., market oriented reforms leading to gradual restoration of capitalism). But where Bukharin’s socialist humanism stumbled, and where Datta Gupta’s analysis stumbles, is in the assumption that Stalinism was another (albeit harsher) route to socialism. That it was a distinct social group (precise nature a matter of huge debate among anti-Stalinist Marxists) has to be recognised. Those who remained trapped within the framework of building socialism in one country, and a one party regime, could not see the transformation. This was why, even when Bukharin was to become a dissident, he would go on working for the Stalinist regime. This would be why he would appeal to Stalin to the end, even though he tried to retain his dignity, unlike the hapless Zinoviev and Kamenev.

Yet, the fact that he could not be rehabilitated after 1956 shows that his ideas did retain a sting. It would be in 1988, the year of his centenary and into Perestroika and glasnost that he would be rehabilitated in the USSR. Contrary to the official Soviet writings of that era, however, serious studies showed that Bukharin cannot be regarded as the intellectual antecedent of Gorbachev. One needs to look at the actual texts of the Bukharin-Preobrazhenskii-Trotsky debates of the 1920s. They all agreed that there was a need to move from the NEP to socialism. Datta Gupta does not bring in that debate. But his examination of Bukharin’s War Communism writings and NEP era writings in fact show that while Trotsky during the War Communism era had been deeply worried by the crisis faced by the Soviet state, Bukharin seems to have believed the ultra-left defence of War Communism. Lars Lih claims that Bukharin never abandoned the spirit and rationale of War Communism.

Datta Gupta discusses, in two very interesting chapters, Bukharin’s writings on culture and on philosophy. Bukharin was one of the most widely read Marxists of the RCP(B)/CPSU(B) leadership. He could deliver sensible speeches on poetics or on Marxism and the history of science. He was also closely associated with the Proletkult current in the early years of the revolution. However, the post 1921 evolution of Bukharin showed several stages. In 1922 he argued that the resolution of cultural and educational programmes was the most urgent. However, Datta Gupta’s claim that this put him opposed to Trotsky is doubtful. Between 1922 and 1926 Trotsky would write a series of essays stressing the need to integrate a cultural revolution with economic transformation. As the toleration of the 1920s gave way to a dogmatic Socialist Realism in the 1930s, Bukharin attempted a softer line. His long report on poetry and poetics sought to distinguish between natural and human sciences, and stressed the need for an ontological hermeneutics. A secret report of the NKVD looked at his critical views of contemporary Soviet poets. He called for diversity, opposed undifferentiated unity. He would do it again when he looked a fascism and culture. However, it is necessary not to assume that every line he wrote in the 1930s was a disguised critique of Stalin and Stalinism.

Bukharin’s writings on philosophy are also treated at length. This also leads Datta Gupta to a consideration of the views of Lenin, Gramsci and Lukacs on Bukharin’s philosophical position. Gramsci provided a sustained critique of Historical Materialism. But Bukharin’s re-reading of Lenin, Data Gupta suggests, was a major factor in his shift to a more dialectical stance in the 1930s. The very brief treatment of the Philosophical Arabesques, however, is not very satisfactory. One can say that as an introduction to a complex subject, Datta Gupta has attempted to generate interest in his subject. But the simultaneous attempt to look at the wide range of studies on Bukharin as well as to look at Bukharin’s own writings all within the scope of such a brief text a times creates problems for the unwary reader. Thus, his relationship with the Deborin school needs more extensive treatment, to give just one example. Given his presence along with Boris Hessen at the famous Congress where Hessen delivered his paper on History of Science, Bukharin’s philosophical journey has more layers than presented in this book.

Bukharin as a dissident remained trapped, because he could never think of a revolutionary overthrow of the bureaucratic regime. Datta Gupta is too scrupulous a scholar not to notice this. Hence he ends by suggesting that because Bukharin did not call for a direct attack on the regime, his critique remains an incomplete one capable of creating confusion.