This gave Stalin a most important comeback and it was only the beginning of Stalin’s quest for the power of Russia. Lenin’s testament was send to the CC in May 1924 but it was not released to the party. If it had been it would have ended Stalin’s career. Zinoviev and Kamenev convinced the CC not to release it, because of the following causes it could have; the testament was not very positive about the party, Zinoviev and Kamenev thought that Stalin was no real threat to them and they wanted his help to get rid of Trotsky, and that the testament would help Trotsky. Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin were now ahead in the struggle to conquer the power.
In contract, Bukharin continued to argue in favour of the NEP and lost popularity as a consequence. In 1925, Zinoviev and Kamenev had abandoned the NEP in an attempt to gain control but due to the continuing success of the NEP, this failed as a result. Stalin’s ability to understand the right time to switch from right wing to left wing meant he was able to gain popularity and prove his intelligence. The alliances Stalin made and broke played a crucial role in his struggle to become the leader of the USSR.
What the other members of the soviet party such as Trotsky did not realize however; was that Stalin would use the position to gain a mass of followers for his socialist ideals and would use it as a stepping stone to achieve greater political influence and manipulate his way even further in the ranks. He had gained so much power and influence that in 1922 Lenin had asked for his removal from the party as he had “gained too much power”, he would advise his party this in a document that is now called “Lenin’s Last testament” a document that has a numerous amount of varying theories into its actual creation, either way the testament was for the most part underplayed and Stalin manipulated the party rules and the people in the party to for the most part ignore the document; much to Trotsky’s disappointment. After Lenin’s death in 1924 Stalin would not hesitate to preach his socialist ideals, which would be successful as the government did not choose to open up it’s meetings to the public in order to appear “healthy and stable”. By wanting to appear stable the party made it relatively simple for Stalin to use threats and targeted attacks to crush
William Carr states ‘ A revolutionary situation did exist in 1918 as long as the people were no longer prepared to obey the old rulers’ This highlights the disruption amongst the people, an awareness that there was a shift of power but whether this new awareness constitutes a revolution can be questioned. The end of the Kaiser rule was significant as the lifelong belief the German people once had in their Kaiser and his Authoritarian rule was shattered; a significant change in mentality that allowed the possibility of a new democratic republic. This was such drastic change and for the first time meant Germans in theory
The workers of the world had to be “liberated” from bourgeois exploitation. As the principle communist nation of the world, Russia had a duty to spread the revolution begun in 1919 to the rest of Europe. The view of many Marxist scholars was that the proletariat had been brainwashed by the rich, and thus were not capable of instigating a workers’ revolution themselves – therefore Communism had to be introduced by force. Stalin realised that the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe was a rare opportunity for Russia to act as this vanguard. Perhaps less importantly, though still a significant point in the domination of Eastern Europe, was the desire of Stalin to
Stalin’s desire to initiate collectivisation was motivated by his struggle against Bukharin and the Communist party’s right wing. The radical nature of collectivisation appealed to the left-wingers of the party. It was more appealing than the right wing alternative of importing grain as importing grain would reduce the pace of industrialisation because importing would mean spending the money needed to develop Russia’s industry. This allowed Stalin to appear strong because he showed that Russia’s agricultural difficulties could be transformed through strong leadership, and also asserted that peasants who refused to co-operate with the state agricultural policy were essentially terrorists and enemies of the people. When collectivisation was criticised by some local officials, Stalin published an article called ‘Dizzy with success’ in Pravda, defending the policy by arguing that the target for collectivisation had been met and therefore the programme would be suspended, in order to cover up the carnage that collectivisation had in actual fact caused.
After the 1905 revolution, Russia was in need of political and economic reform if it was to remain one of the world’s great powers and prevent another revolution from occurring. The answer to this was the October Manifesto. However, some of the Tsar’s attempts to reform made little change to Russia. The October Manifesto was published as a result of the 1905 revolution as a way to appease the peasants and to be seen as revolutionary change. The October Manifesto promised to create a parliament called the Duma.
The Soviet Union was structured to the tastes of the leader at the helm, and so served his interests. The policies in place served not to improve the economic, social or economic fortunes of the entire nation but to concur with the ideological leanings of the leader in office. So was the case with communism. Despite this production model failing utterly to satisfy the basic demands of the ordinary Soviet citizen, it remained in place. They thought a departure from this model would signify a Soviet surrender to the Capitalist West in the ideological war.
Stalin was, by opportunism able to gain control of the party machine and use it to his own advantage, and use his own political skills to out maneuver his opponents, while they often displayed lackluster tactics in a vain attempt to win support of a party loyal to Stalin. After the 1917 revolution, Vladimir Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik political faction and the Russian Nation. Whenever possible, Stalin would present himself as Lenin’s right hand man, and following Lenin’s death in 1924, he defended Lenin’s legacy. Ironically, shortly after Lenin died, he told the colleagues that it would be disastrous if Stalin inherited the reins of the government. During the 1920s, Stalin appointed key people to Communist Party posts.
Even though this solved all the immediate needs of the communist state, the majority of the peasants were unhappy about the new policies and rebelled against the Bolsheviks. This, in turn, forced Lenin to change policies and introduce the New Economic Policy. The NEP was seen, in the Bolsheviks’ eyes, as a return to capitalism as it allowed small businesses to open and people to sell goods in the market, even though major industries, such as steel and iron were still under government control. Lenin had a huge impact on Russia. He made Russia a strong state and consolidated her