Rise to Power
"From this standpoint the prime factors in the question of stability are such members of the C.C. as Stalin and Trotsky. I think relations between them make up the greater part of the danger of a split...Comrade Stalin...has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution. Comrade Trotsky, on the other hand...is distinguished not only by outstanding ability. He is personally perhaps the most capable man in the present C.C. [Central Committee]...These two qualities of the two outstanding leaders...can inadvertently lead to a split...[which] may come unexpectedly."
-Vladimir Lenin, December 24, 1922
"After Lenin's death, Stalin began to rid the party of oppositionists or anyone else who threatened his power. The leaders of the party became the pieces in his chess game that he would move and remove at anytime, as if deciding their fate." |
Lenin's death resulted in a power struggle, during which Stalin liquidated all opposition, including Trotsky, his chief rival, to assume an impenetrable position of leadership in 1929.
“Stalin was able, hard working, and focused, as well as conniving and manipulative. When Lenin suffered a series of strokes in 1923 and died in January 1924, Stalin was in many ways Lenin's most natural successor.” |
"He became the top leader of the Bolshevik Party, and he would see to it that nothing would ever bring him down from this position, no matter what the consequences."
-Kelley Hassan, history major at Lourdes College