THE RISE OF STALIN

Vladimir Moss
An Attempt to Understand Why Stalin, not Trotsky, Attained Supreme Power in the Soviet Union

The rise to power of Stalin over the whole of Russia and over all his fellow-Bolsheviks is one of the mysteries of Soviet history. In particular, historians have been surprised why it should have been Stalin, and not the more striking Trotsky, who conquered in their famous struggle for power in the 1920s. The question could be put – misleadingly, as we shall see – as follows: how did Stalin, the most undistinguished of the leading Bolsheviks from an intellectual point of view, the uncharismatic bureaucratic plodder (an early nickname was“Comrade Filing-Cabinet”(1) with little hold (in a personal sense) over his fellow Bolsheviks, the non-Russian, non-Slav, non-European ex-seminarian and bank robber, acquire, within ten years of the revolution, such ascendancy within the party and the nation that he could expel from both the party and the nation – Trotsky, the hero of 1905 and October and the Civil War, the brilliant writer and demagogue and courageous man of action, the dynamic,cultivated and popular European internationalist?As a provisional hypothesis to explain this fact we may apply to the Soviet situation the words of the ancient Greek historian Thucydides in his
History of the Peloponnesian War
: “Inferior minds were as a rule more successful; aware of their own defects and of the intelligence of their opponents, to whom they felt themselves inferior in debate, and by whose versatility of intrigue they were afraid of being surprised, they struck boldly and at once. Their enemies despised them, were confident of detecting their plots, and thought it needless to effect by violence what they could achieve by their brains, and so were taken off their guard and destroyed.”In agreement with this hypothesis, there is plenty of evidence that Trotsky grossly underestimated Stalin, “the outstanding mediocrity of our Party”, as he said to Sklyansky. Boris Bazhanov, Stalin’s secretary during the mid-twenties, confirms Isaac Deutscher’s opinion that “Trotsky felt it beneath his dignity to cross swords with a man as intellectually undistinguished and personally contemptible as Stalin”
2
. Trotsky also felt it beneath his dignity to indulge in the kind of political skulduggery that Stalin excelled in, especially the tactic of “divide and conquer”. Stalin’s very obscurity, the stealthy but steady way in which he acquired power, lulled his opponents into inactivity.Trotsky was like a hare, opening up a large lead very quickly but then sitting back and preening his whiskers, while Stalin the tortoise crept past him to the finishing-line. And indeed, we know that he was vain and arrogant,“treasuring his historic role”, in Lunacharsky’s words, in the looking-glass of his imagination. Stalin, too, was vain, but he hid this fault more carefully…

Vladimir Moss
Son of a British diplomat, born in London in 1949, educated at Charterhouse (1962-66), Oxford University (1967-70) and Surrey University (1972-28). Degrees in philosophy and psychology (B.A., Ph.D). Languages: French, Russian, ancient Greek and Latin. Research interests: Orthodox Christian Theology and History, World History, Russia since the Revolution. Religion: Orthodox Christian (since 1976). Widower, no children

How did Stalin emerge as leader of the USSR in 1929?:

There are many different reasons on why Stalin emerged as the leader of the USSR,despite the fact that Trotsky was the most respected in the party whereas in 1929 Stalininstead became the leader. I beliee that there were ! main reasons on why Stalinemerged as the "ltimate leader, and it was mainly beca"se of his personal characteristics,as he was a ery c"nning and skillf"l man o"tmane"ering his opponents. #s well as his personal characteristics, he had a h"ge adantage as he had control oer the partyorgani$ations thro"gh the %olitb"ro and &rgb"ro as he was made %arty 'eneral Secretaryin 1922. &n top of this, his opponents had weaknesses which allowed him to slowly rise"p the ranks. (astly, it was his s"ccessf"l policies s"ch as Socialism in &ne )o"ntry asthey were approed by the ma*ority of the )omm"nist %arty. Therefore, it was mainly primarily his personal characteristics that enabled him to gain power however he was helped in this by a number of contrib"ting factors. Some consider l"ck to also be important however, I don+t agree with this theory as Stalin didn't really hae m"ch l"ck in his emergence as the leader as it rarely helped him b"t played as a contributing factor of secondary importance for his emergence as leader