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The Power Struggle (The Power Struggle Begins; 1924 Death of Lenin …

- - - - THE FALL OF TROTSKY
        After Lenin's death, Trotsky was left
        glorified in his last will and testament,
        however given the successful nature of
        the events that attempted to remove
        Trotsky of power, he was eliminated
        very early in the contest for power.
        
        Trotsky was regarded as the natural successor of assuming the leadership position in Russia. This was affirmed by Lenin's Will and Testament, where Trotsky was impressed with the most positive comments out of everyone that was noted.
        
        During Lenin's time served as leader, Trotsky was referred to as his 'Right hand man". They shared a very close kinship, despite the fact that they did disagree on certain things. These rare disagreements between Trotsky and Lenin were resurrected by the triumvirate after the death of Lenin, in an attempt to jeopardise the legitimacy of Trotsky's position of leader of the USSR. By shining a light on explicitly the conflict between Trotsky and Lenin, a man who had been deified after his death, Trotsky's popularity within both the party and the entire Soviet Union had been significantly reduced. His chance of assuming leadership position was nearly over, and his chances of redemption were respectively unlikely
        
        TIMELINE OF TROTSKY'S FALL
        
        1921
        At the 10th Party Congress, a ban on factionalism was enforced. Stalin used this successfully against Trotsky over the next few years
        
        1924
        Trotsky missed Lenin's funeral. Lenin's testament which castigated Stalin, failed to gain widespread, public exposure
        Trotsky's opposition to the centralisation and bureaucratisation of the party failed at the 13th Party Congress
        
        1925
        Trotsky lost his job as Commissar of War
        
        1926
        Trotsky was removed from the Politburo
        
        1927
        Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party
        
        1928
        Trotsky was exiled to Alma-Ata in Turkistan
        
        1929
        Trotsky was expelled from the Soviet Union, and began foreign exile in Turkey
        
        Next to Lenin, Trotsky was the most influential of all Bolshevik leaders of the time. He was the one who:
        
        Masterminded the October 1927 seizure of Bolshevik power
        
        Transformed the Red-Militias into the five-million strong Red Army
        
        Organised the attack on the Kronstadt rebels
        
        Trotsky was outmanoeuvred during the 1920s power struggle by Stalin, who had written Trotsky out of Soviet history once he assumed rule. Trotsky was labelled:
        
        a counter revolutionary
        
        Antiparty
        
        Rightist
        
        Deviationist
        -Pro-German
        
        Traitor
      - KEY EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF TROTSKY
        
        1879
        Trotsky was born as Lev Davidovich Bronstein to Jewish parents as one of eight children. The family was not particularly devout.
        
        1888 - 1897
        He was educated in a Jewish school in Gromokley and then St Paul's High School in Odessa. He finished his schooling in Nikolayev.
        
        1897
        He organised the South Russian Worker's Union. For his efforts he was arrested, spent a few months in solitary confinement and then 18 months in an Odessa prison
        
        1902
        After prison, he ended up in a Siberian camp, but in 1902 managed to escape and later that year, arrived in London. The young Bronstein chose the name of one of his jailers for his passport: Trotsky. Once in London, Trotsky met Lenin and started working for the (Marxist) Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
        
        1903
        When the party split, Trotsky opposed Lenin but he never became an outright Menshevik
        
        1905
        Towards the end of the 1905 Revolution, Trotsky became chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet. He was arrested after a week
        
        1906 - 1917
        Trotsky was tried and sentenced to exile in Siberia for life. He managed to escape even before he got there. During the next decade, Trotsky travelled widely, developed his ideas and tried to reunite the party. He often worked as a journalist
        
        1917
        At the time of the March Revolution, Trotsky was in New York. It took him two months to return to Russia, and along the way he was briefly imprisoned in Canada. Back in Petrograd, he soon found common cause with Lenin. Following the July Days, Trotsky was briefly imprisoned but was freed following the Bolshevik's effort during the Kornilov coup. In September he became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. Trotsky persuaded Lenin to delay the Bolshevik takeover so that the party's actions could be presented as being carried out in the name of the Soviets. Trotsky organised the takeover of Petrograd, which heralded the Bolshevik Revolution
        
        1918-1920
        As Commissar of Foreign Affairs, Trotsky led negotiations for peace with Germany. However, his 'no war no peace' strategy was rejected by Lenin. By the time of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, Trotsky had become Commissar of War. Trotsky was to prove an able and charismatic leader, simultaneously inspiring and utterly ruthless. His five-million strong Red Army emerged victorious in the civil war.
        
        1921
        Faced with the Kronstadt Revolt, Trotsky agreed with Lenin that the rebellion had to be crushed in order to consolidate the revolution. More than 15,000 men died during the crushing of the Kronstadt Revolt.
      - TROTSKY'S VISION
        
        Trotsky's ultimate goal was to achieve an international revolution, reasoning with evidence from traditional Marxism and its effectiveness within fully developed capitalist conditions, that revolution in peasant-based such as Russia would prepare the foundation for the establishment and expansion of his permanent revolution. Trotsky argued that this internal revolution within Russia would spread quickly to those capitalist countries, encouraging a worldwide socialist revolution. In this way, revolution is made permanent, spreading through feudal, capitalist and socialist stages, finally achieving global communism
    - - After the death of Lenin, Stalin was left shamed in his Last Will and Testament, yet this did not stop him from utilising his position as General Secretary to his fullest potential and eliminating all potential opposition to eventually assume power.
      - STALIN'S BACKGROUND 1978-1919
        
        18 December, 1878
        Stalin was born Josef Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in the Georgian town of Gori. For unknown reasons, official accounts of Stalin's life give his birth date as 21 December 1879
        
        1878-1988
        Stalin's parents, Vissarion and Ekaterina, were of peasant background but had moved to the Georgian capital, Tiflis, where Vissarion worked as a cobbler. It would have been a tough and poor childhood. Vissarion was a violent alcoholic who beat his son, while Ekaterina did her best to protect her son.
        
        1888-1894
        Stalin attended school in Gori where he was forced to speak Russian. Stalin's Russian would always have a Georgian accent, a fact mocked by his better educated Bolshevik colleagues later on
        
        1894-1899
        Stalin attended the Tiflis Seminary and seemed to be heading towards a religious life. He was expelled from the Seminary in 1899 because of his involvement with the Georgian Social Democratic group, the Mesame Dasi. For the next couple of years, Stalin worked with various left-wing Georgian groups, adopting the party alias 'Koba' - a fictional hero of Russian literature
        
        1902
        Following his organisation of a strike at Batumi, Stalin was arrested and exiled to Siberia
        
        1903
        Stalin married his first wife, Ekaterina Svandize. In december, he joined the Bolsheviks
        
        1904
        He managed to escape from exile
        
        1905
        In December, Stalin had his first meeting with Lenin at the party conference in Tammerfors in Finland
        
        1907
        A son was born to Stalin and Ekaterina, Yakov. Ekaterina died later in the year. Stalin said of her death: "With her died my last warm feelings for humanity"
        
        1909-1912
        Stalin is involved in 'expropriations' (robberies that raised funds for the party). In January 1912, he was appointed to the General Committee by Lenin. It was that time that 'Koba' adopted the name 'Stalin', meaning 'man of steel'
        
        1913-1917
        With Lenin, Stalin co-wrote a party piece called 'Marxism and the national question'. Stalin was arrested again and exiled to Siberia where he saw out the war years
        
        1918-1919
        During the Civil War, Stalin gained prestige for his leadership in the defence of Tsaritsyn (later renamed Stalingrad), though he was also heavily criticised for his dictatorial and violent behaviour
        
        1919
        Stalin was married for a second time to Nadezhda Alliluyeva. They had two children, Svetlana and Vasily. Nadezhda allegedly committed suicide in 1932.
        
        1917
        Following the February Revolution, Stalin was released and made his way back to Petrograd. At first he supported the Provisional Government but switched to the opposition following Lenin's return in April and the leader's call for 'All power to the Soviets'.Stalin played a behind-the-scenes role throughout 1917. He supported Lenin's call for the removal of the Provisional Government, but he played a minor part in the actual October Revolution.
      - Stalins positions of power by 1923 included:
        
        Commissar of Nationalities
        
        Member of the Five-Man Politburo
        
        Commissar of Worker's and Peasants' Inspectorate
        
        General Secretary
      - STALIN'S VISION
- - - - It would inevitably spark a massive peasant rebellion
      - It could lead to lower output as peasants would refuse to cooperate
      - It could lead to conflict in the west
- - - - Inefficiencies in the manufacturing sector, where industry could not take advantage of economies of scale (mass productions/assembly-line techniques
      - Agricultural prices were falling because domestic demand had been satisfied by 1926, little for peasants to buy even if they could sell their surplus. Falling prices meant peasants were cutting production and putting less produce on the market, with all the dangers of food shortages this implied
- - - - Not all young people immediately embraced the regime. Between December 1933 and May 1934 police came across several counter-revolutionary groups, especially those supporting Trotskyism and fascism
      - Shiela Fitzpatrick accounts for the impact of youth homelessness at the time. She states the 'Leningrad police were concerned about the demoralising influence gangs of homeless children were having on school children in the city'. She states that knife fights and other forms of violence were common among young homeless people. Homeless children were corrupted and rebellious, and in some areas, children started to leave their parents to live with the homeless children
      - A stigma was attached to a person who was from a previously bourgeois or upper class background, and many soviet citizens made efforts to 'create' a proletarian or peasant background; to conceal their own background became a crime. It became the duty of Komsomol members to 'unmask' people and expose their true social origin. Unmasking could result in loss of work, food, housing, promotion and other essentials of life. It could also result in expulsion from the Komsomol itself.
    - - For some young people, Soviet rule inspired genuine idealism which went far beyond the exhortations (pressure) of the regime. They sought to do more than obey party dictates or industrialise the nation, they sought to create a new way of life, a new way of living based on true socialist principles.
      - Small groups of young people began to experiment with ideology in a practical way and live based on socialist principles. They would share living space, money and possessions. Domestic tasks were rostered, each person given an equal share of work (regardless of gender and capability). It was their ideal form of socialism.
    - - Membership to the Komsomol made one almost by definition an 'activist'. Komsomol members would volunteer to assist the party or state organisation, displaying their devotion and involvement with the regime. Examples of this include involvement in grain procurement during the collectivisation process and the anti-religion campaigns of the 1930s.
      - They had their own uniform which had knickers, brtinki (boots), stockings and a semi-military tunic with a Sam Browne belt worn diagonally across the chest.
      - The Komsomol was the Soviet Union's youth organisation (Soviet equivalent of Hitler Youth, although they were not identical). The Komsomol were originally independent of the Communist Party, but by Stalin's time it had come under his control. Membership was optional however failure to join could be used as evidence for lack of support towards communist ideals. More practically, lack of membership made it difficult to spread essential ideals of the party. Membership could be seen as a form of blat
      - Activism had an appeal for Komsomol members who displayed great enthusiasm for the idealistic goals of the regime. The element of activism was to expose any abuses they discovered in the democracy.
      - Komsomol activists were not always viewed with positive light by ordinary Soviet citizens and their activities were often resented. They were seen by ordinary citizens as the regime's favoured and privileged few.