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Anna Larina (January 27, 1914 - February 24, 1996) was the wife of the Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917 and intelligentsia and Soviet Union politician....
, and spent many years trying to rehabilitate her husband after he was purged by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953....
 in 1938. She was the author of a memoir entitled This I Cannot Forget.

Born in 1914, Anna Larina grew up amongst professional revolutionaries
Revolutionary

A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavour....
 who stood at the head of the new Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
. As a young girl, she came to know Bukharin, who was 26 years older than her, and she constantly wrote girlish love notes to him.






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Anna Larina (January 27, 1914 - February 24, 1996) was the wife of the Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin
Nikolai Bukharin

Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin , was a Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917 and intelligentsia and Soviet Union politician....
, and spent many years trying to rehabilitate her husband after he was purged by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953....
 in 1938. She was the author of a memoir entitled This I Cannot Forget.

Born in 1914, Anna Larina grew up amongst professional revolutionaries
Revolutionary

A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavour....
 who stood at the head of the new Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
. As a young girl, she came to know Bukharin, who was 26 years older than her, and she constantly wrote girlish love notes to him. She married Bukharin and had a son, Yuri. Anna was separated from her son when he was about one year old, then the NKVD
NKVD

The NKVD or People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the leading secret police organization of the Soviet Union that was responsible for Soviet political repressions during the Stalinism era....
 came and arrested her. In 1937, there were accusations against Bukharin for spying, attempting to dismember the Soviet Union, organising kulak
Kulak

Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent and well-endowed peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union. The word kulak originally referred to independent farmers in the Russian Empire who emerged as a result of the Stolypin reform which began in 1906....
 uprisings, plotting to murder Stalin and attempting mysterious acts towards Lenin in the past. Bukharin never understood why he was being slandered, but was mentally and psychologically prepared for death.

Before his imprisonment, he asked Anna to memorise his testament because he knew it would have been suppressed under Stalin's rule. His treatment in prison destroyed his personality and before his execution he was declaring his solidarity with Stalin. It has been said that his last letter to Stalin was still in Stalin's desk when Stalin died, a fact which gives a macabre insight into the dictator
Dictator

A dictator is an authoritarian ruler who assumes sole and absolute power without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship....
's twisted personality.

Anna was first sent into exile then arrested on September 5th and taken to Astrakhan
Astrakhan

Astrakhan is a major types of inhabited localities in Russia in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea....
. 20 years of her life were wasted in prison, exile and labour camps. In a labour camp, she met her second husband. He was arrested numerous times because of his relationship with Anna. With her second husband she had two children, Michail and Nadia.

In the 1980s she wrote her memoirs and toured Europe to give talks. She would explain that she remained committed to the ideals of the Russian Revolution which she believed Stalin had betrayed.