Editing Nikolai Bukharin (section)

== Power struggle ==
After [[Death and state funeral of Vladimir Lenin|Lenin's death in 1924]], Bukharin became a full member of the Politburo.<ref name=":0">Stephen F. Cohen, ''Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution: A Political Biography, 1888–1938'' (1980)</ref>  In the subsequent power struggle among Leon Trotsky, [[Grigory Zinoviev]], [[Lev Kamenev]] and Stalin, Bukharin allied himself with Stalin, who positioned himself as centrist of the Party and supported the NEP against the [[Left Opposition]], which wanted more rapid industrialization, escalation of [[class struggle]] against the [[kulak]]s (wealthier peasants), and agitation for world revolution. It was Bukharin who formulated the thesis of "[[Socialism in One Country]]" put forth by Stalin in 1924, which argued that [[socialism]] (in Marxist-Leninist theory, the period of transition to communism) could be developed in a single country, even one as underdeveloped as Russia. This new theory stated that socialist gains could be consolidated in a single country, without that country relying on simultaneous successful revolutions across the world. The thesis would become a hallmark of [[Stalinism]].

{{Quote box|width=25em|align=right|bgcolor=|quote=He is an unprincipled intriguer, who subordinates everything to the preservation of his own power. He changes his theory according to whom he needs to get rid of.|source=Bukharin on Stalin's theoretical position, 1928.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sakwa |first1=Richard |title=The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union |date=17 August 2005 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-134-80602-7 |page=165 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CJ6IAgAAQBAJ&dq=bukharin+he+changes+his+theory+according+to+whom+he+needs+to+get+rid+of&pg=PA165 |language=en}}</ref>}}

Trotsky, the prime force behind the Left Opposition, was defeated by a triumvirate formed by Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, with the support of Bukharin. At the [[14th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (b)|Fourteenth Party Congress]] in December 1925, Stalin openly attacked Kamenev and Zinoviev, revealing that they had asked for his aid in expelling Trotsky from the Party.  By 1926, the Stalin-Bukharin alliance ousted Zinoviev and Kamenev from the Party leadership, and Bukharin enjoyed the highest degree of power during the 1926–1928 period.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20090706070323/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,722598,00.html RUSSIA: Humble Pie], ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'', 25 October 1926.</ref> He emerged as the leader of the Party's [[Right Opposition|right wing]], which included two other Politburo members ([[Alexei Rykov]], Lenin's successor as [[Premier of the Soviet Union|Chairman]] of the [[Council of People's Commissars]] and [[Mikhail Tomsky]], head of trade unions) and he became General Secretary of the [[Communist International|Comintern]]'s executive committee in 1926.{{sfn|Cohen|1980|p=216}} However, prompted by a grain shortage in 1928, Stalin reversed himself and proposed a program of rapid industrialization and forced [[collectivization]] because he believed that the NEP was not working fast enough. Stalin felt that in the new situation the policies of his former foes—Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev—were the right ones.<ref name=":1">Coehn, 1980.</ref>

[[File:Nikolay Bukharin 1925.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Nikolai Bukharin at the Congress of educators in 1925]]

Bukharin was worried by the prospect of Stalin's plan, which he feared would lead to "military-feudal exploitation" of the peasantry. Bukharin did want the Soviet Union to achieve industrialization but he preferred the more moderate approach of offering the peasants the opportunity to become prosperous, which would lead to greater grain production for sale abroad. Bukharin pressed his views throughout 1928 in meetings of the Politburo and at the Communist Party Congress, insisting that enforced grain requisition would be counterproductive, as War Communism had been a decade earlier.<ref>Paul R. Gregory, ''Politics, Murder, and Love in Stalin's Kremlin: The Story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina'' (2010) ch 3–6.</ref>