Description
The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin’s Widow
By Anna Larina
Introduction by Stephen F. Cohen
‘I lived with Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, my husband, through what were both the happiest and the most exciting days of our lives. But our last six months together were made so difficult, so painful, that each day felt like a century. This memoir of that time was written over the many years since, set down in fragments whenever I found relief from family worries and cares. Yet, not for a moment did I forget the disastrous events of my youth. Not for a single day did terrible memories fail to trouble my mind and shake my very soul.
You must understand that, from childhood, I lived among people who were totally dedicated to the cause of socialist revolution. First, of course, was my father, Yury Larina (Mikhail Aleksandrovich Lurye). Amazingly brilliant and astonishingly courageous, he probably played the decisive role in the formation of my character and convictions. In addition, since he was a steadfast friend of Bukharin, it was as a young girl that I first came to know the man to whom I would later be linked
by destiny.’ Anna Larina, from her preface
‘As Stephen Cohen notes in this fine introduction, apart from the books of Trotsky and Stalin’s daughter, this is “the only uncensored memoir ever to appear from inside the highest levels of that historic and doomed world.” It is an enthralling book.’ Foreign Affairs
