In consolidating power and becoming this dictator,
pretty much everyone in the party ended up getting pulled into this
to make room for Stalin to take over.
So, in 1927, Bukharin testified against Trotsky,
making accusations of fracturing and factions.
Bukharin described the party line as the democratic outcome -
the result of a vote -
and he said that then has to be enforced in order to maintain unity.
And so as Bukharin said to Trotsky,
"Why would the majority choose the party line otherwise
if it wasn't the right line, the line that we should back?"
Trotsky lost his responsibilities, including that of War Minister,
due to his advocacy of Trotskyism,
which is obviously a belief in his own ideas.
He relinquished control without a fight,
seeing that he agreed, in general,
that everyone in the party had to follow the party line
in order to lead the people,
that this was the right and utopian thing as they moved toward socialism.
So he gave up without a fight, and he was later exiled and then killed.
A decade later,
it was Bukharin who was on trial in 1938 and finally executed.
Transcriber: Michel Smits Reviewer: Maurício Kakuei Tanaka