How to Understand Stalin's Rise to Power

Few dictators in world history have been as feared and reviled as Josef Stalin, who as head of the USSR from the mid-1920s to 1953 was responsible for the deaths of untold millions of Soviet citizens. Stalin's accession to power shortly after the Russian Revolution in 1917 is a classic study in power politics, with effects that reverberate to the present day. Here's how he managed to outmaneuver his rivals.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

1. Stalin aligned himself closely with Lenin. After the 1917 revolution, Vladimir Lenin was the head of the Bolshevik political faction and the Russian nation. Whenever possible, Stalin presented himself as Lenin's right-hand man, and, following Lenin's death in 1924, he vociferously defended Lenin's legacy. (Ironically, shortly before he died, Lenin told colleagues that it would be disastrous if Stalin inherited the reins of government.)

2. During the 1920s, Stalin appointed key people to Communist Party posts. By all accounts, Stalin had an insatiable appetite for administrative work-so his colleagues were content to let him handle the vast Communist Party paperwork, unaware that he was using this opportunity to cultivate loyal followers and place them in key positions. These hardcore "Stalinists" later became an important source of support during the mass purges of the party.

3. Stalin eliminated the "left wing" of the party leadership. After Lenin's death, Stalin started a campaign to discredit the "ideological errors" of his main rival for power, Leon Trotsky (who was on Stalin's left by virtue of his views about international communism). Eventually, Stalin succeeded in driving Trotsky out of the country. He also isolated two other high-profile party members, Kamenev and Zinovyev.

4. Next, Stalin turned his attention to the "right wing" of the party. Stalin had neutralized Trotsky by allying himself with the party's relatively liberal right wing. With Trotsky gone, he turned on this faction's leaders, particularly Nikolay Bukharin, accusing them of the same "ideological errors" that had doomed his rivals on the left. Bukharin soon was forced to step down, and was eventually executed after a mock trial several years later.

5. Stalin eliminated the rest of his rivals in the purges of the 1930s. When the popular party leader Sergey Kirov was assassinated in 1934 (probably on Stalin's orders), Stalin used the murder as an excuse to mop up the rest of his enemies in a series of show trials stretching through the late 1930s. Eventually, Stalin had every individual who could challenge his authority killed or jailed, leaving him in sole control of the USSR.