The Rise of Soviet Russia

The Rise of Stalin
Trotsky and Stalin, World Revolution or State Socialism

5.  The Rise of Stalin

 A Trotsky and Stalin - Early Years to 1922

  i   The death of Lenin, in 1924, led to a long struggle for power between Stalin and Trotsky which was not settled until Trotsky had been expelled from Russia and Stalin came out as master in 1929.  The clash between them was not only a clash of personalities but also a basic difference of approach to the organization and policy of Russia. 

  ii   Leon Trotsky was a key figure in the Russian Socialist and Bolshevik movement.  Born in 1877, he played a leading part in the revolution of 1905 as chairman of the Soviet of St.  Petersburg.  He was exiled to Siberia but escaped and met Stalin for the first time in 1907 at the London Congress of Russian Socialists.  He returned to Russia in May 1917 to join the Bolsheviks in Petrograd and became the head of the Revolutionary Military Committee and the chief organizer of the Bolshevik forces in the 'October Revolution' of 1917.  He was the Commissar for Foreign Affairs in the first Soviet government, the Council of the People's Commissars of 1917.  Throughout the Civil War and up to 1925 he remained head of the Red Army. 

  iii   Joseph Djugashvili, later famous as Joseph Stalin, was born at Gori, a town in Georgia in 1879.  His father was a shoemaker, his mother a washerwoman.  He attended the church school at God and then won a scholarship to the theological seminary at Tiflis where the family had moved.  He was expelled from the seminary in 1899, probably because he had joined a secret socialist organization in the town. 

  iv   Because of his part in the May Day demonstrations at Tiflis, in 1901, he lost his job as a clerk and began to write for a socialist newspaper.  He went 'underground' to escape arrest but continued to have a hand in agitation, strikes and demonstrations.  He moved to Saturn where he continued to spread socialist propaganda from a secret printing press.  His type was laid out in cigarette and match-boxes and on strips of paper.  He was arrested in 1902 under the name of Koba, but got back to Tiflis in 1904 and became the leader of socialism in the Caucasian province. 

  v   His main role was that of writer, organizer, propagandist and administrator.  He represented the Caucasian Bolsheviks at the National Bolshevik Conference in Finland, in 1905, where he met Lenin and was present at further conferences at Stockholm (1906) and London (1907) where he met Trotsky.  He worked in Baku from 1907 to 1910 and was sent into exile from 1910 to 1911.  He became a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee and issued the first copy of Pravda in 1912.  He was exiled to Siberia in 1913 but escaped to work for his party again.  He now used for the first time the name Stalin, the 'man of steel'.  He went on assignments for the Bolshevik party to Cracow and Vienna but was then betrayed by a fellow-revolutionary, arrested at a harmless musical matinee and exiled to Siberia for the next four years. 

  vi   In March 1917, he was released and went to Petrograd.  He was made a member of the new Bolshevik Central Committee set up in April.  He was very much overshadowed by Trotsky in the October rising and in the Civil War, though in the latter period he was one of the five men, with Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev and Bukharin who formed the Politbureau, the real government of the country.  It was after the Civil War and during the period of Lenin's illness (1922-4) that he rapidly moved to power.  In 1922 he became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist party.  As General Secretary it was Stalin's task to prepare the agenda for the Politbureau, to transmit its decisions to the lower ranks in the party, and his work brought him into contact with many thousands of party officials and functionaries. 

 B The Clash on Policy - World Revolution or State Socialism

  i   According to Marxist doctrine, which was the basis of Bolshevik thinking and principles, the revolt in Russia should be followed by the collapse of the other capitalist states of Europe and the Russian revolution would therefore be the prelude to 'World Revolution' and the revolt of the workers everywhere.  To encourage revolutionary movements in other countries the Bolsheviks set up the Third (Communist) International Working Men's Association or Comintern in 1919.  In spite of postwar problems the other European nations kept their capitalist economy and their democratic traditions.  Russia became isolated in Europe, however, because of the fear which the policy of 'World Revolution' created among her neighbours. 

  ii   Trotsky was the leading advocate of the policy of 'World Revolution' since he maintained that a single Communist state would be too weak to survive, surrounded by capitalist enemies.  Stalin, however, believed in the build-up of socialism in one country and stressed that priority should be given to the socialization of Russia and to the strengthening of her economy under the tight control of the Communist party. 

  iii   The death of Lenin, in 1924, left the leadership of the Communist party open, and the rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky moved to a climax.  The Communist party feared Trotsky as the Napoleon of the Russian Revolution, as the personal dictator, the individualist in a movement that was sacredly collective.  Ironically enough, Stalin, the man no one thought of, stole the part.  As General Secretary he gradually destroyed all opposition to his personal rule.  Trotsky lost his post as Commissar of the Red Army in 1925, was expelled from the Politbureau in 1926, driven out of the Communist party in December 1927, and exiled from Russia in 1929.