Another reason for his little popularity amongst older party members was their distrust for him. They were afraid that he might become a dictator with all of the RED ARMY on his side. They doubted his loyalty because they knew he had joined the party just some time ago. This scored yet another point towards Stalin because he had been a loyal member of the Bolsheviks from twenty years, he was a man to be trusted.
Stalin held a very powerful and very important position, as the general secretary of the party. He was powerful enough to remove or appoint people to a post. He appointed people who supported him and removed people who were likely to support Trotsky. Older Bolsheviks were not concerned about his moves because they were all worried about Trotsky taking over as dictator.
Another big difference between Trotsky and Stalin was their ideas of ruling the USSR. Trotsky believed in “Permanent Revolution” where as Stalin believed in “socialism in one country”. Trotsky wanted to help communists in other countries to revolution and push forward the revolution in the USSR.
He wanted to end the NEP and introduce more socialist ways of running the economy, Stalin however believed they could build a fully economic estate by the help of people within the USSR and not from outsiders. Members of the communist party liked the policies of Stalin better than those of Trotsky’s. Because they didn’t trust Trotsky to lead them into a better USSR.
On the day of Lenin’s death Stalin found the perfect opportunity to be appointed as leader and rule out Trotsky. He planned that he would not invite but send him else where instead of Lenin’s death. As luck would have had it Trotsky was too ill to attend the funeral anyways. People started talking about Trotsky’s rude behavior and this produced to be a very negative point in Trotsky’s favour.
In his testament Lenin warned the communist party against Stalin dieing. He described him as being RUDE and as not being able to use the power given to him with “Sufficient Caution” in his testament. He had been a very concerned about Stalin taking over as leader after Lenin had died. However Stalin had been struck after Lenin’s death because it was it was decided that Lenin’s testament would not be made public. This was a huge point in Stalin’s favour. These points I have mentioned indeed did help Stalin in gaining votes at the time of the elections.
The conclusion I will make “ why Stalin and not Trotsky emerged as Lenin’s successor” is that, had Trotsky not been arrogant to those lower than him and had he joined the party earlier than he did, he would have been trusted enough to become the new leader of the communist party after Lenin’s death.
