How Did Stalin Gain Power? (Edexcel A Level History): Revision Note

Timeline & Summary

• This note will examine how Stalin became the unopposed leader of the USSR by 1929

• Lenin’s death in 1924 created a power vacuum in the Communist Party

• Lenin’s Testament criticised Stalin and Trotsky, which prevented its publication

• Several contenders emerged, but Stalin’s position as General Secretary gave him a key advantage

• Stalin rose by controlling appointments, building alliances, and outmanoeuvring rivals

• Historians debate whether Stalin’s rise was due to his skill, his opponents’ weaknesses, or structural factors

Death of Lenin, 1924

• From mid-1921, Lenin’s health declined

  • He survived an assassination attempt in 1918

    • Fanya Kaplan, a member of the SRs, shot Lenin twice outside a factory in Moscow

    • One of the lead bullets was lodged in Lenin's head. It was slowly poisoning his brain

  • He suffered a massive stroke in May 1922

• From then until his death in January 1924, Lenin became increasingly paralysed

  • Another stroke in March 1923 left Lenin unable to speak

  • From this point, he was unable to lead the Communist Party actively

• Lenin died on 21st January 1924

  • The Bolsheviks embalmed Lenin's body and created a mausoleum

Lenin's Testament

• Between late 1922 and early 1923, Lenin dictated his last will

  • It stated Lenin's aims for the Communist Party after his death

  • It would become a controversial document

What did Lenin say about Trotsky?

What does this mean?

• Lenin believed that Trotsky was a capable member of the Party

• However, he thought Trotsky was:

  • Overconfident and arrogant

  • Too focused on paperwork rather than leading the Party

What did Lenin base his opinion on?

• Lenin had given a lot of power to Trotsky. Instances of this include:

  • The Communist Revolution

  • The Russian Civil War

• Trotsky was a gifted orator and writer

  • Party members believed that Trotsky thought himself more intelligent and devoted to communism than them

• Trotsky was Jewish

  • Although Trotsky did not practice Judaism, it turned many of the Party against him

What did Lenin say about Stalin?

What does this mean?

• Lenin believed that Stalin could not be trusted with power

• Stalin came across as rude, disloyal, unpolite and argumentative with his colleagues

What did Lenin base his opinion on?

• Stalin had risen quickly through the Bolshevik Party

  • Stalin had little to no role in the October Revolution

  • Lenin gave Stalin the position of Commissar for Nationalities in November 1917

  • Stalin made his reputation during the Russian Civil War

  • In 1921, Stalin became General Secretary of the Bolshevik Party

• Lenin became suspicious of Stalin

  • Stalin built a support base in the Party that was loyal to him

    • The alliance between Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev was called the Triumvirate

• Stalin's anger became a serious issue

  • In March 1923, Lenin discovered that Stalin had shouted at his wife on the telephone

    • Lenin saw this as an unforgivable act

  • Another stroke left Lenin unable to remove Stalin as General Secretary

• Lenin viewed Stalin as cruel and uneducated

  • Stalin came from Georgia, which Lenin viewed as an inferior nationality

Contenders by 1924

• After Lenin's death, the party became divided between the left-wing and the right-wing

Left-wing

• Believed in War Communism

• Favoured the 'permanent revolution'

  • This stated that the USSR needed to spread communism across the world

  • This idea was unpopular with the Party

Right-wing

• Believed in the New Economic Policy

• Favoured 'Socialism in One Country'

  • This was intended to strengthen communism in the USSR before pursuing global communism

  • This idea was popular with the party

Key members of the Party and their allegiances

Why was there a power struggle from 1924?

• Lenin did not name a successor

  • The left and right of the Bolshevik Party fought in a power struggle

How did Stalin become leader?

• Stalin played a clever political game to become the leader of the USSR

  • By December 1929, Stalin was the undisputed leader of the USSR

What was the biggest factor that allowed Stalin to take power?

• Stalin’s rise can be explained in different ways

  • Some historians highlight his political skill

  • Others emphasis the weakness of his rivals

  • Historians also argue the structure of the Party itself allow Stalin to take power

Stalin’s political skill

• Stalin used his control of Party machinery and his talent for building alliances to outmanoeuvre rivals

Key historians

"The key to Stalin's growing power was his control of the party apparatus in the provinces. As the Chairman of the Secretariat and the only Politburo member in the Orgburo, he could promote his friends and dismiss opponents. During the course of 1922 alone, more than 10,000 provincial officials were appointed by the Orgburo and the Secretariat, most of them on Stalin's personal recommendation. They were to be his main supporters during the power struggle against Trotsky in 1922-3." - Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy (1996)

"Stalin had already used the massive patronage of the Secretariat to promote his allies, Molotov, Voroshilov and Sergo; he also supplied an encouraging and realistic alternative to Trotsky’s insistence on European revolution: “Socialism in One Country.” The other members of the Politburo, led by Grigory Zinoviev, and Kamenev, Lenin’s closest associates, were also terrified of Trotsky, who had united all against himself. So when Lenin’s Testament was unveiled in 1924, Kamenev proposed to let Stalin remain as Secretary, little realizing that there would be no other real opportunity to remove him for thirty years. Trotsky, the Revolution’s preening panjandrum, was defeated with surprising ease and speed. Having dismissed Trotsky from his power base as War Commissar, Zinoviev and Kamenev discovered too late that their co-triumvir Stalin was the real threat." - Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin : the court of the Red Tsar (2003)

Weakness of rivals

• Stalin’s rise was assisted by Trotsky’s arrogance, Zinoviev and Kamenev’s unpopularity, and his political abilities being under-estimated

Key historians

"Nor was Trotsky's personality an asset. He was widely disliked for his arrogance and lack of tact. As he himself admitted, he had a reputation for "unsociability, individualism, aristocratism." Even his admiring biographers conceded he "could rarely withstand the temptation to remind others of their errors, and to insist on his superiority in insight." - Richard Pipes, Russia under the Bolshevik regime (1995)

"Trotsky refrained from attacking Stalin because he felt secure... it seemed to Trotsky almost a bad joke that Stalin, the wilful and sly but shabby and inarticulate man in the background, should be his rival." - Isaac Deutscher, Stalin: A political biography (1993)

"What counted in Stalin’s favour, though, was that Kamenev, Zinoviev and others anticipated a strong bid from Trotski for supreme power. Stalin was a valuable accomplice whom they were disinclined to remove from the General Secretaryship. They knew his defects as well as Lenin did; they were also less aware of his capacities and ambition than Lenin had become: they therefore underestimated the difficulty they might have in handling him in the years ahead. This meant that if Stalin played his hand skilfully, he might yet survive the storm." - Robert Service, Stalin (2005)

Structural factors

• The nature of the Party after the Civil War — centralised, authoritarian, and bureaucratic — gave Stalin systemic advantages

Key historians

"But there was one problem. The party's apparat - a hierarchy of committees and 'cadres' (who were really appointed officials), topped by the Central Committee's Secretariat - was to all intents and purposes a bureaucracy; and bureaucracy was something that Communists disliked on principle. In the succession struggle of the mid 1920s, Trotsky tried to discredit Stalin, the party's General Secretary, by pointing out that he had built a party bureaucracy and was manipulating it for his own political ends. However, this criticism seemed to make little impact on the party as a whole." - Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution (1982)

"From the earliest years of the Soviet government, small overlapping groups of high officials made the most important and wide-reaching decisions, and Stalin was the only person who was a member of all of these groups...Stalin was able to use this institution to make appointments throughout the party and to work out his own policies." - Ronald Suny, Stalin and His Stalinism: Power and Authority in the Soviet Union, 1930-1953 (2008)