The abc of communism revisited

Sheila Fitzpatrick

pp. 167-179

in: Studies in East European Thought 70, 2018.

Abstract

The ABC of communism by Nikolai Bukharin and Evgenii Preobrazhenskii was both an exercise in utopian planning and a Left Communist manifesto. As such, Lenin viewed it with some suspicion. Its educational section combined ideological prescription with description of the actual policy of the Soviet People's Commissariat of Education (Narkompros), as well as elements of polemic with that policy. Preobrazhenskii, its author, would shortly emerge as a major opponent of Narkompros's core commitments in education, clashing with Nadezhda Krupskaia, Lenin's wife, and other Narkompros leaders.