Stalin’s Rise to Power Power Struggle between Trotsky and Stalin and its Immediate Aftermath The struggle for succession: Lenin finally died on January 1924, two years after a debilitating stroke in May 1992. Meanwhile various Party bosses began jockeying for his position. Each of the major Party leaders had their own sources of power or fiefdoms. Zinoviev headed the powerful and prestigious Party organisation of PetrogradKamenev headed the Moscow party organisation.Trotsky remained Commissar for War and he had immense national prestige as a leader of the October Insurrection and organiser of the victory of the Civil War. However, he had joined the Bolsheviks only in 1917.Bukharin was the editor of the Pravda, the Party newspaper.Like Zinoviev and Kamenev, Stalin (born Djugashvili) was a long time Party member. From 1917 he was Commissar for Nationalities, and therefore responsible for the creation of the USSR in 1924. Stalin was appointed as the General Secretary in 1922 May, and was a
member of the Orgburo and Politburo since 1919.Stalin had the political skills necessary to maximise the power the Secretariat gave him without overplaying his hand. Many regarded both Stalin and his official position as dull and insignificant – gave him a further advantage, because his rivals failed to take Stalin seriously until it was too late. Sukhanov described Stalin as, “a grey blur, sometimes appearing instinctively, and then vanishing without a trace”The struggle for Lenin’s position was played out by a succession of changing political alliances between the party bosses. As early as 1923, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin – the ...
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member of the Orgburo and Politburo since 1919.Stalin had the political skills necessary to maximise the power the Secretariat gave him without overplaying his hand. Many regarded both Stalin and his official position as dull and insignificant – gave him a further advantage, because his rivals failed to take Stalin seriously until it was too late. Sukhanov described Stalin as, “a grey blur, sometimes appearing instinctively, and then vanishing without a trace”The struggle for Lenin’s position was played out by a succession of changing political alliances between the party bosses. As early as 1923, Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin – the Bolshevik old guard, who had all joined the Party before the war –allied against the newcomer Trotsky, in what was known as the triumvirate. In 1925, Trotsky’s defeat was marked by his dismissal as commissar of war. This was the beginning of a long odyssey, which brought about him to exile in Alma-Ata in Soviet central Asia in 1928. In 1929 the government expelled him from the Soviet Union, dumping him unceremoniously in Turkey. After periods of exile in Turkey and Norway, he died in Mexico in 1940 at the hands of a Stalinist assassin.Zinoviev and Kamenev fell out with Stalin in 1925. In 1926, they tried to ally with Trotsky and the so-called ‘left-opposition’ against Stalin and Bukharin. In November 1927, the Party expelled them along with Trotsky. During the procurement crisis of 1927, Stalin turned on Bukharin. In the middle of 1929 Bukharin lost his place on the Politburo. The Civil War habit of electing those the centre wanted elected had taken firm hold. And it was Stalin through the Secretariat, who benefited from it. Increasingly opposition leaders believed that the votes that defeated them reflected not the free decisions of the Party delegates, but the disciplined organisation of a unified Party machine directed by the General Secretary. And the Secretariat’s power of appointment transfer gave the machine wide disciplinary powers over its members.The existence of a one party state gave the Party control over all positions of influence within the Soviet Union, controlling careers in the military, industry, education, the arts and sciences. Christian: “The Party and the Party machine had become the key to success in any sphere of Soviet life.”The nature of the Party also changed, expanding in size. At the end of 1917, there were about 250000 Party members, by 1921, over 700000, and by 1030 there were almost 1.7million. Christian: “They were joining the institution most likely to provide them with a life of power and privilege.”The composition of the Party had changed, from an intelligentsia dominated to a working class, mostly young with limited education cohort. Reasons for the Triumph of Stalin as Leader of the USSR Lenin, to his credit, glimpsed something of the danger as early as the end of 1922, when he wrote from his sickbed: ‘Comrade Stalin . . . has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I’m not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.” A month later, Lenin was demanding that Stalin be removed from his post as GS. By 1928, Stalin was becoming identified with a forceful economic strategy that had great appeal to many Party members. It simply had to return to the forceful methods that ‘had worked so well’ during the Civil War. This appealed to many within the Party, while his resistance to demands for greater democracy within the Party earned him the support of the crucial provincial Party secretaries, for it shielded them from excessive scrutiny. His approach to the peasantry increased the influence of the secret police and earned him valuable support within the police apparatus. He also managed better than any of his rivals to present himself to the Soviet public as the legitimate heir of Lenin.Christian: “In short, despite the great influence he wielded through the Party Secretariat, Stalin, like any other politician, had to negotiate, compromise and coax potential supporters to get the Congress or Central Committee votes that built up his power and buried his rivals.By 1930 he was already undisputed boss the Party and the Government. By 1937, he had acquired a personal power more extensive and more arbitrary than any Russian leader since Ivan IV.
