The Politburo in 1924 consisted of seven men. They were not a united body. Over the previous years they had split into two groups, the Rightists and the left Opposition. Lenin was the stabilizer between the two groups. He hoped there could be collective rule in order to prevent a split within the Party. Lenin’s death seemed to be the starting point of the rise of factionalism within the party.

Lenin had doubts about both Right and Left. At the end of 1922 he wrote a letter to the Party congress, outlining his ideas and giving his opinions about the members of the Politburo.

Meanwhile in 1928 Trotsky had been deported to Alma Ata in Soviet Central Asia and a number of Trotsky’s close friends and relations were killed. These deaths were designed to hurt Trotsky, to impress upon him that he continued to live only because Stalin had not yet decided that he should die. In fact, only on thing seems to have held Stalin’s at that time; Trotsky’s continuing popularity with the workers. Stalin Knew that Trotsky’s death, whether by so called legal means or by sudden action, would rouse an opposition which might have led to his own undoing, and he was not yet in a strong enough position to dictate without fear of consequences.

In 1929 Trotsky was exiled from the USSR (he was assassinated by Stalin’s secret police in 1940) while Stalin became supreme leader of the USSR. It was the end of a great struggle for power. One might say that the leadership crisis could be even be compared to the Civil War crisis that occurred few years before. Stalin’s victory was the turning point in Russian history. His successful tactics were soon imposed by other dictators of this century, even by the greatest one of all, Hitler, who gained power by similar ways. One might wonder what would the outcome might have been if the intellectual Trotsky had manage to overcome Stalin’s cunning strategies.

Trotsky was intellectually brilliant and always ahead of his colleagues in his thinking (he was the first to suggest the NEP and there was great opposition to his views. He had to revise his views and by the time he had done this, his colleagues reached to a conclusion that Trotsky had been right all the time). Other representations of that era describe Trotsky as vain and arrogant. At Politburo meetings he often treated his colleagues with contempt, sometimes turning his back on them or storming out of the room in a temper. This shows the difficulty of finding a clear and unbiased description on an event or a personality of the past since different representations show different aspects or views on a subject. This problem of representing the past can only be solved by extensive researching were a clear description may be found.

‘Terrible embarrassment paralyzed all those present... Stalin sitting on the steps of the steps of the rostrum looked small and miserable. I studied him closely; in spite of his self-control and show of calm , it was clearly evident that his fate was at stake.’

In this letter also known as his ‘Testament’ Lenin wrote that the main danger facing them all was a split in the Party. He thought that Trotsky and Stalin were chiefly to blame for this.

During his argument with Trotsky, Stalin joined forces with the Rightists. Stalin joined them not because he agreed with NEP but because he hoped they would help him to drive Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev out of the Politburo. Stalin’s

Some topics in this essay:
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