Why was it Stalin and not Trotsky who succeeded Lenin in 1924?

when Stalin was very young. Stalin mother took in washing as a job. As a child, Stalin experienced the poverty that most peasants had to endure in Russia at the end of the 19th century. Trotsky was an exceptionally bright and capable student, and in 1896 he moved to Nicolayev to complete his secondary education and to study mathematics. Where as Stalin mother was deeply religious so in 1888 she managed to get him a place in a local church school. He made good progress at school and eventually won a free scholarship to the Trifles Theological Seminary. Trotsky turned revolutionary, in 1897 he was instrumental in founding the South Russia Workers Union and in 1898 the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). Stalin joined a secret organization called Messame Dassy while studying. Members that were there were supporters of Georgian independence from Russia. Trotsky on the other hand was arrested for his political activities, put in prison, and in 1900 moved to Siberia. Stalin was also surrounded by socialist revolutionaries and through them him he met Karl Marx who filled him with ideas. Trotsky adopted the name Trotsky in 1902 as he escaped from prison and met up with Lenin in London. Stalin was expelled from the Trifles Theological Seminary In May, 1899, several reasons were given for this action including disrespect for those in authority and reading forbidden books. Stalin was later to claim that the real reason was that he had been trying to convert his fellow students to Marxism. Trotsky then joined Lenin the staff of iskra (The Spark), the Communist newspaper. Trotsky and Lenin, as intellectuals, had much respect for each other; however, in 1903 at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, the Bolsheviks were led by Lenin, while Trotsky was among the Menshevik leaders. Stalin left the seminary, and after several months of leaving Stalin was left unemployed. He eventually found work by giving private lessons to middle class children. Later, he worked as a clerk at the Trifles Observatory. He also began writing articles for the socialist Georgian newspaper, Brdzola Khma Vladimir. Trotsky returned to Russia In 1905, where he participated in the first Russian Revolution, and in December that year he was elected President of the St Petersburg Soviet.  However, Trotsky and several other members of the St. Petersburg Soviet were soon arrested, and after a trial they were deported to Western Siberia in January 1907. Stalin joined the Social Democratic Labour Party In 1901, most of the leaders were living in exile, and he stayed in Russia where he helped to organize industrial resistance to Tsarism. On 18th April, 1902, Stalin was arrested after coordinating a strike at the large Rothschild plant at Batum. After spending 18 months in prison Stalin was moved to Siberia. Trotsky escaped Siberia that year and at the Fifth Party Congress in London he met Stalin for the first time.  For the next several years Trotsky was busy publishing several papers, among them Pravda. Stalin went to the Second Congress of the Social Democratic Labour Party in London in 1903; there was a dispute between Vladimir Lenin and Julius Martov, two of the party's leaders. Lenin argued for a small party of professional revolutionaries with a large amount of non-party sympathizers and supporters. Martov disagreed believing it was better to have a large party of activists. Trotsky went to Russia in 1917, as the Tsar abdicated. August that year Trotsky became a member of the central committee of the Bolshevik party, which had Lenin as its uncontested leader. Trotsky became second in command after Lenin. Stalin got all his ideas off Julius Martov. They were mostly based on the socialist parties that existed in the other European countries such as the British Labour Party. Lenin argued that the situation was different in Russia illegal to form socialist political parties. At the end of the debate Martov won the vote 28-23. Vladimir Lenin was unwilling to accept the result and formed a faction known as the Bolsheviks. Those who remained loyal to martov became known as the Mensheviks. Trotsky was appointed People's Commissar for Military, in 1918 and Naval Affairs, and as such he managed the founding of the Red Army. As Lenin became ill in 1922, and died two years later, Stalin gained the control of the Soviet Union.  Stalin disliked and opposed Trotsky, and in 1927 he was expelled from the Excecutive Committe of Comintern.  In 1928 Trotsky was banished to Alma Ata in Kazakhstan, and from there deported to Turkey in 1929. Stalin and Trotsky represented opposite directions for Communism.  But while Trotsky used the mighty pen, Stalin implemented communist policies that were exceedingly costly both in lives, and in depriving the Soviet people from freedom. Trotsky used his writings to oppose Stalin, and to establish an alternative direction for communism, and his followers became known as Trotskyists.  While Stalin was struggling with practical problems in the Soviet Union, the Trotskyists were fighting for class equality between intellectuals and capitalists. One of Trotsky's loyal sympathizers was Diego Rivera, the famous Mexican muralist, and Trotsky appears, together with Lenin, in two of Diego's murals.  The first was the 'Communist Unity Panel' at the New Workers School in New York, and the second the 'Man, Controller of the Universe' mural in Mexico City. August 20th 1940 Leon Trotsky was attacked with an ice-axe in his office in Mexico City by one of Stalin's followers, and the following day Leon Trotsky died.