Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, b. Oct. 9 (N.S.), 1888, d. Mar. 13, 1938, a leading Soviet theoretician of the 1920s, was executed during the Great Purge of the 1930s.  He became a Bolshevik in 1906 and lived in exile from 1911 until 1917.  In August 1917 he was elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee. After the Bolshevik Revolution in November (October, O.S.) 1917, he became editor of Pravda.  Bukharin led the so-called Left Communist opposition to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (Mar. 3, 1918), which he regarded as a betrayal of the quest for international socialist revolution;  but he later accepted Lenin's policies.  Chosen a full member of the Politburo in 1924, he became president of the Communist International (Comintern) two years later.

When Joseph STALIN commenced the forced collectivization of agriculture in 1928, Bukharin opposed the new policy, becoming leader of the so-called Right Opposition.  He lost his posts in 1929.  Although he soon recanted his criticisms, he never regained his former power.  Arrested in 1937, Bukharin was tried publicly in March 1938 for conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state.  He made an alleged confession and was shot. Soviet authorities later acknowledged that the charge was false, and he was officially rehabilitated in 1988.  Bukharin's most influential work was Economic Theory of Leisure Class (1927).