Here at last in English is Nikolai Bukharin's autobiographical novel and final work. At once novel, memoir, political apology, and historical document, How It All Began, known in Russia as "the prison novel," adds greatly to our understanding of this vital intellectual and maligned historical figure.

In the 1920s and '30s, he defended Lenin's liberal New Economic Policy, claiming that Stalin's policies of forced industrialization constituted a "military-feudal exploitation" of the masses. He also warned of the approaching tide of European fascism and its threat to the new Bolshevik revolution. For his opposition, Bukharin paid with his freedom and his life.

While in prison, Bukharin wrote four books, of which this unfinished novel was the last. It traces the development of Nikolai "Kolya" Petrov (closely modeled on Nikolai "Kolya" Bukharin) from his early childhood to age fifteen. In lyrical and poetic terms, it paints a picture of Nikolai's growing political consciousness and ends with his activism on the eve of the failed 1905 revolution.

The novel is presented here along with the only surviving letter from Bukharin to his wife during his time in prison, an epistle filled with fear, longing, and hope for his family and his nation.