'The most important factor in Stalin's rise to power was his personality.' Discuss this view.
Aruni Mukherjee
`‘The most important factor in Stalin’s rise to power was his personality.’ Discuss this view.
Many argue that the rise of Joseph Stalin as the ultimate leader of the Bolshevik party which was holding the power in the Soviet Union after the death of the revolutionary leader Lenin in 1924 was mainly due to the personality which Stalin had. There are many factors, which are linked together to develop this argument. However, there are other factors as well which can be seen as leading to the rise of Stalin as the leader of the Bolshevik Party.
Historians like Conquest and Tucker have argued that Stalin’s personality cult was extremely significant in his rise to power. They have described him as tough and ruthless and a person who was determined to secure his power base within the party. They have also said that although he was not exceptionally bright he was very cunning. Trotsky, one of his chief competitors in the run to power has argued in the same way and claimed that the reason he missed Lenin’s funeral was due to wrong information given to him by Stalin. This resulted in many people thinking of Trotsky as an irresponsible person with no respect either towards the Communist movement or towards Lenin, their revolutionary leader Lenin. This incident underlines the fact that a strong personality of Stalin led him to secure much support within the party. He was looked upon as a defender of evolution and Stalin cleverly exploited this feeling to pose Trotsky and Bukharin as opponents of evolution in the eyes of fellow soviets. Historians, when trying to compare the personality of Stalin with his opponents, have found that there were certain characteristics about Stalin that lacked in his opponents and increased Stalin’s prospects considerably. Many people in the Communist party looked upon Trotsky to be arrogant, Bukharin was looked upon as a person too much occupied with ideology to look after the benefit of the communist movement, Kamenev and Zinoviev have been argued to be not strong enough compared to Stalin. Many modern western historians have argued that the ideologies that Stalin stood for i.e., Socialism in one country and dictatorship of the proletariat appealed to more soviets than permanent revolution, which was the alternative ideological perspective. Stalin also managed to strengthen his position greatly when he stared the cult of Lenin and many soviets felt that it gave them a historical role. It is however not true that Stalin’s opponents did not have a clear line of policy at all. It was just that Stalin was clever and strong witted enough to thwart their influence within the party. Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev stood from the start for extreme socialism but Stalin argued justifiably that the peasantry was not yet ready for collectivisation. He supported Lenin’s temporary NEP. In the late 1920s, however, he decided to go in for full-fledged collectivisation and industrialisation thus showing that although he was prepared to compromise when the need arose he was dedicated to communism from the bottom of his heart and this led to a strong support base for him in the party.
