Trotsky’s full name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein, so as you can tell from the name, he was Jewish. This was a disadvantage because of Russian attitudes towards Jews. He was also over confident and arrogant. He made no effort to build up support for himself – infact he annoyed many leading Bolsheviks with his attitude. But that’s just his weaknesses, he had strengths too.
He was a close friend of Lenin – he was second to Lenin in the list of important communists. He was a great intellectual and speaker. Trotsky had planned the revolution of November 1917 and had carried it out like clockwork. He had been a very successful general during the civil war. So it seemed that he had a very good chance of succeeding Lenin.
Stalin’s full name was Josef Vissarianovich Djugash, he was a Georgian and was born near Tblisi in 1879.
Stalin was a real outsider in the leadership race; he was virtually unknown and he was not intellectual and not a great speaker like Trotsky.
He had not done much in the revolution 1917 or in the civil war.
But his strengths were that he was very hard-working, ruthless and cunning. And in 1922 he became party secretary, at the time, this was seen as a boring and unimportant job, but Stalin used his power to promote his own supporters and to send Trotsky’s supporters to out of the way places.
When it came to the time of Lenin’s funeral, Stalin decided to play a trick on Trotsky. He told him a different day so that Trotsky would not show up, but when Trotsky found out the real date of the funeral there was no way he could get there on time. This was bad for his public image, it did not look good.
Stalin then cleverly used Kamenev and Zinoviev to outvote Trotsky, then he used Buckharin to get rid of Kamenev and Zinoviev. This proved that Stalin was very sly, ruthless and cunning.
Trotsky left Russia in 1927, he had lost the battle to become leader. Stalin had been selected as leader. This was probably because they both had different ideas concerning the future of Russia.
Trotsky’s idea’s were:
Rapid industrialisation
“World revolution” – German and Hungarian communist revolutions failed in 1919 and this discredited Trotsky’s ideas.
Stalin’s idea’s were:
Gradual industrialisation
Socialism in one country
So it’s quite understandable how people wanted Stalin to be leader. His idea’s were safer for Russia’s future and Russia could become a better place to live. The board who selected him to be leader wanted Russia to have a steady future and not have to worry about another revolution, they knew that Russia would be safe in Stalin’s hands and they had a lot of confidence in him.
Russia looked to finally be on course for a long and successful run.
