Nikolay Bukharin

(1888 - 1938)

After the February Revolution of 1917, Marxist economist Nikolay Bukharin returned from exile to join the Bolsheviks in Moscow. Though Lenin died in 1924, Bukharin continued to support a program of gradual economic change rather than one of rapid collectivization, briefly allying him with Stalin against Trotsky and others—until Stalin reversed position, denounced Bukharin publicly, and had him arrested in 1937 during the Great Purge. Bukharin was executed after being convicted in a show trial.