III.

Soviet Dictator

After the Bolshevik victory in the civil war, Stalin threw himself into organizational work and administrative tasks. Having served as commissar for state control since 1919, he continued this post until 1923, while in 1922 he was elected general secretary of the Communist Party, a position that gave him control over appointments and established a base for his political power. Stalin’s rude and aggressive behavior brought him into conflict with the ailing Lenin, who shortly before his death in 1924 wrote his political “testament” in which he voiced misgivings about Stalin. In the testament Lenin expressed doubt whether the party’s general secretary would use his authority with sufficient caution, and he called for Stalin’s removal from the post. Adroit political maneuvering enabled Stalin to have Lenin’s testament discounted and suppressed, however, while Lenin’s death freed Stalin to establish a ruling coalition with Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinovyev, excluding Stalin’s rival Trotsky from the succession struggle. Stalin reversed his course in 1925 and joined with Nikolay Bukharin and Aleksey Rykov in a new coalition against his former partners, who in turn joined with Trotsky in 1926 to form an intraparty bloc against Stalin known as the “Left Opposition.” Once Stalin had succeeded in defeating these opponents, in 1928 he then turned against his former allies Bukharin and Rykov. By the end of 1929 Stalin had succeeded in political maneuvers that eliminated his political opponents and established him as the supreme leader of the USSR.