"He Wanted to Make Life Over Because He Loved It"

Abstract

"To: Comrade Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Notwithstanding the tense international situation, I place before you the question of the Party's posthumous rehabilitation of my husband and the father of my son, Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin. I address this appeal to you not only on my own behalf but also at the behest of Bukharin himself. When he was leaving for the last time to attend the February-March Plenum in 1937 (the Plenum sat for more than a single day), Nikolai Ivanovich, having the foreboding that he would never return and considering my youth at the time, begged me to struggle for his posthumous exoneration. This unbearably difficult moment will never die in my memory. Tormented by the investigation, by terrifying confrontations that he could not understand, weakened by his hunger strike to protest the monstrous accusations, Bukharin fell to his knees before me and with tears in his eyes begged me not to forget a single word of his letter, "To the Future Generation of Party Leaders." He begged me to struggle for his exoneration: "Swear that you will do this! Swear it! Swear it!" And I did. It would be against to my conscience to violate this oath. …"