Stalin's Rise to Power - page 1
Keywords: Stalin, Rise, Power, Civil War, Russia
By Richard on 26/09/2008
Level: GCSE Key Stage 4 (Years 10-11)
Page Number: 1 of 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5After Lenin’s death there was no single person who had been decided on as the ruler of Russia. This was partly because Lenin had been such an outstanding leader and there was no one that seemed to be able to fill his role as well as he did. Lenin had led the revolution that had knocked the Tsar out of Power and had created Bolshevism so he was a tough man to follow as leader. The revolution had a been tougher than Lenin ad thought and was not properly finished when he died, the Bolsheviks had had to change there plans as so many people opposed it and they had to use terror and economic concessions to win. During the struggle for power after Lenin’s death Stalin ultimately won because of the way he could manipulate situations to suite him and he could change his views to suit the public.
There was a group of the highest powers in Russia called the Politburo. It was decided at first that the Politburo would lead Russia as a group. Within this group there was a split between right and left, on the right Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov and on the left was Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky. The left wanted much more extreme communism whereas the right wanted compromise. Of course Stalin was more or so in the middle so he die not mixed up in any groups There were several men who wanted the power, but the main two contenders for this title were Leon Trotsky and Josef Stalin as they were the two that had the most support.
Many thought that if anyone would take over it would be Trotsky as he had always been thought of as the follower to Lenin as he appeared to be the most successful. He had led a great victory with the red army during the revolution, which had lent him much fame and Lenin’s respect. He was also an outstanding speaker extremely intelligent, two things Stalin did not possess, but for all Trotsky’s good points there were as many bad. He had been brought up in a wealthy middle class family this and the fact that he was a Jew led to much discrimination within the party, which would explain why he changed his name from Lev Bronstein also Russia was as anti-Semitic as Germany at that time so he would have never become
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