Rise to Power 1924-29

The death of Lenin in 1924, marks the beginning of Stalin's rise to power. At that point he was one of seven members of the Politburo--the others were Zinoviev and Kamenev, Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky. By 1930, Stalin would overshadow them, and by 1940 outlive them. His amazing success can be attributed to a combination of his own political genius and the mistakes that his rivals persisted in making. Gifted ideologues though they were, his opponents were primarily men of theory--Marxists to the core-- rather than men of action. Stalin, meanwhile, never enjoyed a deep understanding of Marxist theory, and was always willing to twist it to his advantage, a habit that proved useful in the years ahead, as he repeatedly out- intrigued his supposed "comrades" within the party.

In December 1924, Stalin first articulated his own twist on Marxist orthodoxy, which he termed "Socialism in One Country." He argued that the success of Marxism in Russia was not contingent upon a worldwide Communist Revolution-- which his fellow leaders expected to begin sweeping through the rest of the world at any moment. The global fall of capitalism would come eventually, he said, but in the meantime it was necessary to build a successful Soviet Union. Trotsky and his supporters vigorously attacked this viewpoint, but by this time, Trotsky's star was in eclipse. Always considered an outsider by the older Bolsheviks, he had been a brilliant military organizer, but was proving less adept at the cutthroat world of party politics. By January 1925, Zinoviev and Kamenev were urging that he be expelled from the Politburo (though Stalin actually acted as a voice of moderation and prevented the measure from passing).

By this point, Stalin was gravitating away from the "troika" and toward the other three members of the Politburo--Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky. These three formed a so-called "Rightist" bloc, differing on economic policy from Zinoviev and Kamenev (who drew their support from old-line Bolsheviks, including Lenin's wife). The "Rightists" wanted to continue with Lenin's New Economic Policy, which allowed considerable economic freedom for the peasantry, while the Zinoviev-Kamenev "Leftists" wanted to push the country more strongly toward state control of economic life.

In 1924, the "Leftists" appeared to hold control over the Central Committee. But by the following year, Zinoviev and Kamenev realized that Stalin, whom they had saved from political ruin after Lenin's death, was betraying them and moving toward an alliance with Trotsky.

In addition, Stalin had begun to gather a strong faction around himself, including figures like Mikhail Kalinin, Kliment Vorishilov, and Vyacheslav Molotov. While Trotsky, the weakest member of the Politburo, remained largely aloof, the Rightists and Leftists clashed at the 1925 Party Congress, and the Rightists carried the day, despite vituperative attacks on Stalin and his "Socialism in One Country" by Kamenev.

Kalinin and Vorishilov joined the Politburo, and the suddenly weakened Kamenev and Zinoviev turned to Trotsky for support, forming a "United Opposition" in the summer of 1926. But they were no match for the Bukharin-Stalin alliance. By the time of the next Party Congress, in October of 1926, Zinoviev and Kamenev had been removed from the Politburo, and Stalin felt secure enough in his power to urge the Party's official repudiation of their views as "anti-Leninist." Trotsky resisted, and in 1927 he was expelled from the party and exiled to Central Asia; Zinoviev and Kamenev, defeated, begged for clemency, which the Politburo granted.

Stalin was triumphant--now, even his ally in this struggle, Bukharin, grew nervous, as he realized that Stalin's power in the Party now overshadowed even his own influence.  By 1928, he was sufficiently alarmed over Stalin's growing power to seek a reconciliation with the disgraced "Leftist", Kamenev. His efforts were fruitless, however--Kamenev was convinced that his only hope of survival lay in going along with Stalin, who was now beginning his campaign against the "Rightists." Having defeated Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev, he now readmitted the latter two into the Party and began to co-opt their ideas, pushing for immediate collectivization of land and rapid, state-controlled industrialization, as opposed to the more gradualist approach backed by Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky.

Throughout 1928 and 1929, Stalin gathered support in the Central Committee, and by November 1929, he was powerful enough to have Bukharin removed from the Politburo. Earlier, in February of that year, Trotsky, who had continued political activity in the Russian east, was expelled from the Soviet Union. With Stalin's strongest adversaries thus humbled or eliminated, he stood alone atop the pyramid of Soviet power.