Lenin's Death and Stalin's Rise to Power (1924-1929)

Vladimir Lenin died on 21 January 1924, leaving behind a document that would trouble Soviet politics for years afterward: the so-called "Testament of Lenin," dictated in 1922-1923, which criticized several leading Bolsheviks, Stalin among them, and explicitly recommended that Stalin be removed from his post as General Secretary. After Lenin's death the Politburo partially suppressed the testament, preventing it from derailing Stalin's position. In the immediate aftermath, power passed to a collective leadership known as the "troika," formed by Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev, which the three men used to politically isolate Leon Trotsky, Stalin's principal rival. Their rivalry was framed publicly as an ideological contest between Stalin's doctrine of "socialism in one country" and Trotsky's call for "permanent revolution," even as Stalin steadily tightened his grip on the party apparatus through his post as General Secretary, to which he had been appointed in 1922, using the Orgburo and the Secretariat to build a personal power base loyal to him alone.