Anna Larina

Anna Mikhailovna Larina (; 27 January 1914 – 24 February 1996) was the third wife of the Bolshevik leader Nikolai Bukharin and spent many years trying to rehabilitate her husband after he was executed in 1938. She was the author of a memoir entitled This I Cannot Forget. Biography Anna Larina was born in 1914. She was adopted by Yuri Larin, a Soviet economist and politician, therefore she grew up among professional revolutionaries who were very high up in the Soviet Union. As a young girl, she came to know Bukharin, who was 26 years her senior, and she constantly wrote girlish love notes to him. She married Bukharin in 1934 and they had a son, Yuri, in 1936. In 1937, when her son was less than one year old, she was separated from him for almost 20 years when the NKVD arrested her. In 1937, Bukharin was accused of spying, attempting to dismember the Soviet Union, organising kulak uprisings, plotting to murder Joseph Stalin, and attempting mysterious acts towards Vladimir Lenin in the past. Bukharin never understood why he was being slandered but was mentally and psychologically prepared for death. Before they were separated, Bukharin instructed Anna to memorise his final testament (knowing that it would be suppressed by Stalin) in which he implored future generations of Communist leaders to exonerate him. Not daring to write it down, she later recalled, she used to lull herself to sleep in prison by repeating her husband's words silently to herself "like a prayer". It was not published in full until 1988.