Bukharin turns on Trotsky

http://mruniversity.com/courses/economic-history-soviet-union/bukharin-turns-trotsky

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