Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (; – 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.