1888-1938. Soviet politician and theorist. A
moderate, he was the chief Bolshevik thinker
after Lenin. Executed on Stalin's orders for
treason in 1938, he was posthumously
rehabilitated in 1988. He wrote the major
defence of war communism in his Economics of
the Transition Period 1920. He drafted the
Soviet constitution of 1936 but in 1938 was
imprisoned and tried for treason in one of
Stalin's `show trials'. He pleaded guilty to
treason, but defended his moderate policies
and denied criminal charges. Nevertheless, he
was executed, as were all other former
members of Lenin's Politburo except Trotsky,
who was murdered, and Stalin himself.