Explain why trotsky rather than stalin became leader of the USSR in 1928

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Explain why Stalin rather than Trotsky became leader of the USSR by 1928?      

After Lenin's death in 1924 there took place quite a long power struggle, the main competitors were seen as Trotsky and Stalin. This power struggle was rather unfortunate for Russia because, although Lenin had put into effect a number of policies to bring forward the Russian economy and kept the communists in power, Russia was still a backward country. When Lenin died because of the power struggle there was no real leader of the country so policies to continue Russia's growth couldn’t come into effect. There were other communists involved in the struggle e.g. Zinoviev, Karmenev and others, but Trotsky was the one who seemed most likely to succeed Lenin's leadership over the USSR. Lenin made a very accurate measure of Stalin's character before he died and I his 'political testament' he made it clear he mistrusted Stalin and recommended he be removed from the party, but unfortunately Lenin died before it could be published and Stalin did eventually gain power.

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There were many reasons why Trotsky should have become leader, his work had been invaluable to the communists coming into power with the November revolution and retaining it later in the civil war but Trotsky did not go all out to get support in the way that Stalin did and had made himself many enemies in his very far left-wing beliefs. And his belief in 'permanent revolution' so spreading communism to other countries while Stalin wanted to increase the USSR's power first, he wanted to concentrate on economic revival, he wanted to reform the USSR. Trotsky also was quite arrogant ...

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