'Lenin's Testament'.

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Lenin knew that his time was coming to an end. So he decided to write a letter to the party congress explaining his future plans and his opinions of the members of the Politburo. This became known as  ‘ Lenin’s Testament’. Each of his Politburo members was examined including both Stalin and Trotsky (of which he blamed for the party’s split).

        Lenin thought Trotsky, as a person, was ‘ Distinguished not only by his outstanding ability’ and ‘ … He’s personally perhaps the most capable man in the Central Committee but has displayed excessive self assurance and shown excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work’.

        He said of Stalin ‘ … having become Secretary [he] has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution’. Ten days later he added Stalin is too rude and this defect  …. Is intolerable in a secretary General. This is why I suggest that comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from his post and appointing another man……….’

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Despite this testament, Stalin was able to keep his post and even be open to higher opportunities. One of the reasons for this was many of the party members were criticised and those who were wanted to rule out the testament and by the end was never even published.

By 1924, the Politburo was divided into three sections, The Rightists, the leftists and the Central Moderates. The main cause of this was many disagreements including the development of the USSR.

Nikolai Bukharin led the rightists; he was mainly in charge of press and propaganda. He believed that the ...

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