Philosophical Arabesques. By Nikolai Bukharin. Pluto Press. 2005. £35 (hardback)

While Bukharin was in prison, awaiting the show trial that would lead to him being sentenced to death and executed in 1938 on p r e p o s t e r o u s , t r u m p e d – u p charges of sabotage and treason, he chose to spent the time writing books. One of these was on philosophy. It was found in the Kremlin archives after the fall of state capitalism, published in Russia and now in English translation.