Gorbachev's Commission Lied in Order to Rehabilitate Bukharin In 1988, during Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika campaign to overthrow Soviet socialism, a Politburo commission re-examined 270 files from the arrest and 1938 trial of Nikolai Bukharin. At trial he insisted that he was indeed guilty of some of the crimes while denying other charges.
Soviet news reports proclaimed that the review cleared Bukharin – he was innocent of all the crimes. However, the Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin governments never published the decree of rehabilitation, let alone the materials that the Politburo commission examined. Independent researchers have discovered the 1988 decree. It provides no evidence that Bukharin was falsely convicted in 1938. Worse, the decree lied about a statement by another accused, Mikhail Frinovsky. He stated that NKVD chief Yagoda talked to certain accused persons before they were to confront another accused person in a recorded meeting. Yagoda wanted the accused person not to disclose that Yagoda himself was a co-conspirator against the regime. But the commission, without quoting Frinovsky directly, said he stated that Yagoda ordered staff to get false confessions from the accused. Whether Frinovsky's statement was true or false is not the issue here. The Gorbachev commission was unable to find any reason to doubt Bukharin's confession to a number of crimes, but it knew it had to conclude that he was innocent. To that end, the commission twisted Frinovsky's words. Historians have used the Gorbachev material for decades to assert that Bukharin was innocent. They were wrong. If they are still active in the field of Soviet studies, they should correct their previous judgment and acknowledge that we have no grounds to set aside Bukharin's confession. So should Trotskyites and anti-communists in general. Don't count on it. –The above post summarizes research by Grover Furr and Vladimir L. Bobrov, "Bukharin’s Fraudulent Rehabilitation: A Study of the Unpublished Soviet Supreme Court Decree," Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory and Practice , at https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/201655 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39742): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39742 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116814900/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
