Sukhanov stood at the centre of the Russian revolution as a founding
member and ideologist of the Petrograd Soviet and as fearless editor of
the leading opposition newspaper. His seven-volume eyewitness memoir of
the major events of the Russian revolution is peopled by such leading
figures as Lenin, Trotsky, Martov, Chernov, Tsereteli and many more. In
the 1920s he stood out in courageous opposition to those of his fellow
economists who prepared the Communist Party for Stalin's brutal
collectivization. Found guilty at the farcical Menshevik show-trial of
1931 and subsequently victim of a trumped-up charge of spying for
Germany, he was shot in 1940 and only rehabilitated in 1992. His fate
epitomizes the tragedy of those Russian intellectuals who sought an
accommodation with the Communist dictatorship and were destroyed by it.