A number of historians, led by Robert Conquest, have adopted the argument first advanced by Boris Nicolaevsky in "The Letter of an Old Bolshevik" (1936), that a division existed in the Politburo between moderates and hard-liners.
A number of historians, led by Robert Conquest, have adopted the argument first advanced by Boris Nikolaevsky in "The Letter of an Old Bolshevik" (1936), which was based on his conversations with Bukharin earlier in the year. According to this version, a division existed in the Politburo between moderates and hard-liners.