Stalin was one of many who claimed power after Lenin. How did it happen that a young revolutionary from the Georgian town of Gori eventually became what they began to call "the father of nations"? A number of factors led to this.
Combat youth
Lenin said about Stalin: "This cook will cook only spicy food." Stalin was one of the oldest Bolsheviks, he had a truly fighting biography. He was repeatedly exiled, took part in the Civil War, in the defense of Tsaritsyn.
During his youth, Stalin did not disdain expropriation. At the 1907 congress in London, "exs" were banned (the congress was held on June 1), but already on June 13, Koba Ivanovich, as Stalin was then called, organized his most famous robbery of two State Bank carriages, since, firstly, Lenin supported the exs secondly, Koba himself considered the decisions of the London Congress to be Menshivist. During this robbery, Koba's group managed to get 250 thousand rubles. 80 percent of this money was sent to Lenin, the rest went to the needs of the cell. Stalin's activity, however, could become an obstacle in his party career. In 1918, the head of the Mensheviks, Yuli Martov, published an article in which he cited three examples of Koba's illegal activities: the robbery of the State Bank's carriages in Tiflis, the murder of a worker in Baku, and the seizure of the steamship Nikolai I in Baku. Martov even wrote aboutthat Stalin has no right to hold government posts, since he was expelled from the party in 1907. Exception did take place, but it was carried out by the Tiflis cell, controlled by the Mensheviks. Stalin was furious at this article of Martov and threatened Martov with a revolutionary tribunal.
The principle of aikido Stalin, during the struggle for power, skillfully used the theses of party building that did not belong to him. That is, he used their own strengths to fight competitors. So, Nikolai Bukharin, "bukharchik", as Stalin called him, helped the future "father of nations" write a work on the national question, which will become the basis of his future course.
Bukharin was the author of the term "general line of the party", the expression "city of three revolutions" belonged to Zinoviev. Zinoviev, on the other hand, promoted the thesis of German Social Democracy as "social fascism." Used Stalin and the development of Trotsky. The doctrine of forced "superindustrialization" by siphoning funds from the peasantry was first developed by the economist Preobrazhensky, close to Trotsky, in 1924. The economic directives drawn up in 1927 for the first five-year plan were guided by the "Bukharin approach", but by the beginning of 1928 Stalin had decided to revise them and gave the go-ahead for accelerated industrialization. Even the semi-official slogan "Stalin is Lenin today" was put forward by Kamenev.
Cadres are everythingWhen they talk about Stalin's career, they conclude that he was in power for more than 30 years, but when he took over as General Secretary in 1922, this position was not yet key. The General Secretary was a subordinate figure, not the leader of the party, but only the head of its "technical apparatus". However, Stalin managed to make a brilliant career in this post, using all his opportunities. Stalin was a brilliant personnel officer. In his 1935 speech, he said that "cadres decide everything." Here he was not cunning. For him, they really decided "everything." Becoming the general secretary, Stalin immediately began to widely use the methods of selection and appointment of personnel through the Secretariat of the Central Committee and the Central Committee's Accounting and Distribution Department, subordinate to it. Already in the first year of Stalin's activity as secretary general, the Constituent Distribution Department made about 4,750 appointments to responsible posts. You need to understandthat no one was jealous of Stalin's appointment to the post of General Secretary - this post assumed routine work. However, Stalin's trump card was precisely his predisposition to such a methodical activity. Historian Mikhail Voslensky called Stalin the founder of the Soviet nomenklatura. According to Richard Pipes, of all the big Bolsheviks of the time, only Stalin had a taste for "boring" clerical work.
Struggle with Trotsky Trotsky was Stalin's main opponent. The creator of the Red Army, a hero of the revolution, an apologist for the world revolution, Trotsky was overly proud, hot-tempered and egocentric.
The confrontation between Stalin and Trotsky began much earlier than their direct confrontation. In his letter to Lenin on October 3, 1918, Stalin wrote irritably that "Trotsky, who had just joined the party yesterday, is trying to teach me party discipline." Trotsky's talent manifested itself during the revolution and the Civil War, but his military methods did not work in peacetime. When the country began the path of internal construction, Trotsky's slogans about fomenting a world revolution began to be perceived as a direct threat. Trotsky "lost" immediately after Lenin's death. He was not present at the funeral of the leader of the revolution, being at that time on treatment in Tiflis, from where Stalin strongly advised him not to return. Trotsky himself also had reasons not to return; believing that "Ilyich" was poisoned by conspirators headed by Stalin, he could assumethat he will be next. The plenary session of the Central Committee in January 1925 condemned Trotsky's "totality of speeches" against the party, and he was removed from his post as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and People's Commissar for military and naval affairs. This post was taken by Mikhail Frunze. Trotsky's cardinality turned away from him even his closest associates, to which Nikolai Bukharin can be ranked. Their relationship fell apart due to differences over NEP. Bukharin saw that the NEP policy was bearing fruit, that the country now did not need to be "reared" once again, this could destroy it. Trotsky, however, was adamant, he was "stuck" on military communism and the world revolution. As a result, it was Bukharin who turned out to be the person who organized the exile of Trotsky. Leon Trotsky became an exile and tragically ended his days in Mexico, while the USSR was left to fight the remnants of Trotskyism,which resulted in the massive repression of the 1930s.
"Purges" After the defeat of Trotsky, Stalin continued to fight for the sole power. Now he concentrated on fighting Zinoviev and Kamenev.
The left opposition in the CPSU (b) Zinoviev and Kamenev was condemned at the 14th Congress in December 1925. Only one Leningrad delegation was on the side of the "Zinovievites". The controversy was very heated; both sides willingly resorted to insults and attacks on each other. Quite typical was Zinoviev's accusation of becoming a "feudal lord" of Leningrad, of inciting a factional split. In response, the Leningraders accused the center of becoming “Moscow senators”. Stalin assumed the role of Lenin's successor and began to instill a real cult of "Leninism" in the country, and his former comrades-in-arms, who became Stalin's support after the death of "Ilyich" - Kamenev and Zinoviev, became unnecessary and dangerous to him. Stalin eliminated them in the apparatus struggle, using the entire arsenal of methods. Trotsky, in a letter to his son, recalled one significant episode. “In 1924, on a summer evening,- writes Trotsky, - Stalin, Dzerzhinsky and Kamenev sat over a bottle of wine, chatting about various trifles, until they touched on the question of what each of them loves most in life. I do not remember what Dzerzhinsky and Kamenev said, from whom I know this story. Stalin said: "The sweetest thing in life is to outline a sacrifice, prepare a blow well, and then go to bed."