The post of Commissar for Nationalities gave Stalin little power, but it was the first step in his rise up through the ranks. Lenin remained impressed by Stalin’s work and continued to promote him further. By 1919 he was the Liaison officer between the Politburo and Orgburo, allowing him to monitor both party policy and party personnel. It was here that Stalin first showed signs of taking advantage of the opportunities his positions gave him. He began to build up personal files on all party members, detailing their actions which he later used against people such as Kamenev and Zinoviev in the fight for individual power. This showed how even though Stalin may not have been planning his rise to power, he still took clever, devious steps along the way which assisted him without realising it was at the time.
However, before his death, the amount of power Stalin had accumulated began to worry Lenin, who had once described him as ‘That wonderful Georgian’. He expressed his concern in his Testament, requesting that after his death, the members of the politburo must find some way to remove Stalin of this position into one with much less power.
Stalin, worried by the damning comments within the testament, urged the other members of the Politburo, also criticised to suppress the Testament. The only member who received praise was Trotsky, yet he agreed, along with the others, to keep the Testament secret. This helped Stalin greatly because if the public became aware of Lenin’s worries, then he surely would have been stopped, but along with Trotsky’s absence from the funeral, a critical mistake on Trotsky’s behalf, for whatever reasons, which questioned his respect for Lenin’s death, allowed Stalin to gain the upper hand. He was able to act as orator and lead mourner at the funeral, confirming his appearance to the public as Lenin’s heir. This was an important move politically as it gave Stalin an immediate advantage over the other members of the Politburo, who from now on would find it very difficult to form any opposition to Stalin, but just as important, it displayed Stalin as continuing the ‘mantle of Lenin’ to the people of the USSR.. They had seen Lenin as almost a god, and so anyone seen to be continuing his work would be accepted and worshipped in the same way.
This would not have been possible without the suppression of the testament, and Trotsky’s presence at the funeral would have made it more difficult for Stalin to appear as Lenin’s successor. These events helped Stalin immensely and Trotsky’s weaknesses only made it even easier for Stalin to gain control.
Another important factor in his rise to power was the system of Government Stalin inherited. When the Bolsheviks took control in 1917, they had no traditional system of Government to follow so they simply made it up as they went a along. Lenin had already established a one party system with a strong individual leader, so after Lenin’s death, Stalin saw this opportunity and began to work towards it. The lack of a traditional government was also important because it allowed Stalin to rise up without being recognised, and as no one suspected this mediocrity of doing so, he wasn’t stopped.
With Stalin’s power base now firmly in place, no one could do anything to stop him. Stalin did, however, realise he had opposition and was concerned by the threat from Trotsky and the Left Bolsheviks. He used Kamenev and Zinoviev to turn against them and push them out of power. Once the left were taken care of, Stalin then turned on Kamenev and Zinoviev, and eliminated the threat from the Right, which included Lenin’s favourite, Bukharin, by using their economic ideas, which Stalin saw would be a weakness to the Soviet state and would threaten the survival of the revolution, to outlaw them from any positions of power.
Stalin used his powers of clever manipulation to do this. People trusted Stalin as he kept his cunningness secret, but he also took advantage of opportunities whenever he saw them to increase his power base. He had manipulated the power of the entire party machine into his hands, using measures already in place to increase his position within the party and remove any opposition he was likely to face.
He was loyal and committed to the Bolshevik cause, so people never suspected him, and his average character meant that people thought they could trust him, unlike the flamboyant personality of Trotsky, who along with his Menshevik past, made people suspicious and untrustworthy of him. His post of General Secretary at the time of Lenin’s death allowed him to take control of the party behind the scenes, and because of the system of government he was able to do this to without being suspected, along with the suppression of Lenin’s testament, which was crucial in his rise to power.
All the factors were vital in Stalin’s rise to power, but without them all coming together at the right time, his rise may still have been possible, but would have been made a lot more difficult. What is important is that Stain was a very lucky man. He was an opportunist who did things at the right time, but this alone could not have been enough to secure Stalin’s position as leader of the party. I think the most important factor in Stalin’s rise to power was Trotsky’s weaknesses and mistakes, which played right into Stalin’s hands. Trotsky missed the chance to remove Stalin from power completely by failing to speak up against the suppression of Lenin’s testament. Because of Trotsky’s reluctance to stand up to him, after this event, Stalin’s rise to power as the dictator of the USSR was firmly in place. Now all that was needed was a bit of manipulation here and there to gain complete and absolute control.