Factors that Assisted Stalin During His Rise to Power

Although it appears that the factors which assisted Stalin’s ascent to power were interconnected and equally important, the pivotal reason for Stalin’s rise to prominence was due to the influence of the Party Machine, “His control of the party machinery gave him indirectly control of the state”. It could be argued that simply his own abilities allowed Stalin to manipulate the party machine, as claimed by historian J. Laver who stated that Stalin “outmanoeuvred rivals and played on their weaknesses” However it is clear, without Stalin’s manipulative skills such as his opportunism and cunning, he would have been unable to take advantage of leftist and rightist faults. Yet his skills alone would not have lead Stalin to political success, it was also the careful manipulation of the party machine, which ultimately was the key to why Stalin was able to come to power in Russia by 1929.

Historians such as S. Kotkin argue that what was essentially was the most significant factor in Stalin’s rise to power was his strong “authoritative control and manipulative powers” that he held over the Communist party machine. Stalin had achieved four major roles in the party leading up to Lenin’s death in January 1924, from the People’s Commissar for Nationalities in 1917 and eventually achieving Secretary of the Communist Party in 1922. The powers he gained in this ascent were invaluable as it elevated him to the “most powerful single position in the U.S.S.R”3 This role gave him access to 26,000 personal documents and “by 1922 Stalin had amassed a formidable range of posts and power”

He was able to access an assortment of crucial information, which would help him manipulate his opponents in such way to eliminate them as potential competition. Using his high status In the Bolshevik party, Stalin was able to “place his wife as Lenin’s secretary” giving him a “stream of information about Lenin's views”. Again another example Stalin using his political intuition to his advantage, giving Stalin an edge over his opponents which eventually would lead to overall power of the U.S.S.R.

A. Bullock supports the view that Stalin’s appointment as General Secretary allowed him to choose and filter new party members, a tool which yielded considerable results when the “Lenin Enrolment” of over 500,000 new members took place. The Lenin enrolment helped Stalin cleverly increase the amount of members in the communist party, yet enabled him to cherry pick his recruits to ensure they were to be easily controlled by him. The Lenin enrolment occurred between early 1923 to late 1925.

During this time approximately 340,000 to 600,000 new members of the Communist party were created. The Majority of these members were highly uneducated; with only 8% of the “Lenintsy” educated to secondary school standard. The new members were also predominantly young, very easy to control and to persuade. The new recruits were “ready enough to accept what they were told” This putting him at a colossal political advantage over his peers in the Politburo as he was able to gain valuable votes, This party base “enabled Stalin to out manoeuvre his rivals at all stages” making him a valuable ally for many such as Zinoviev and Kamenev who often sought his support. Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev formed an alliance called the “troika”. They spread rumours about the opposition and also gained control of the Politburo and Central Committee.

Furthermore, Stalin continued to eliminate the other leaders by playing them off against each other in the Politburo, using key information he had gathered from being a vital cog in the communist party machine. One could say it is surprising that the rightist Bukharin did not gain power after Lenin’s death. He was a favourite in the Communist Party, referred to as the “golden boy” (Lenin’s Testament) by Lenin himself. Bukharin’s major downfall was the lack of backbone he held, which one could say was the turning point of his career. He was criticised for being too soft over key issues such the N.E.P. Which in 1929, Lenin used the debates over to expel Bukharin from the party. If he had had more backbone and stuck up for his views, one could say he might have been still in the running for the leadership of the U.S.S.R.

However, there are several major factors outside of Stalin’s control of the Party machine that contributed to his eventual dominance. Historian Stephen Kotkin supports this view, particularly with attention to Trotsky’s failure to stop Stalin. Stalin used his cleverness and his tactical manipulation to again tarnish Trotsky’s reputation, the most outstanding example being at Lenin’s funeral. On 21 January 1924 Vladimir Lenin died. At this time Trotsky was ill with pneumonia and was not fully informed about the details of Lenin’s funeral. Stalin saw this as an opportunity to mislead Trotsky so he told him the wrong date for the funeral. Stalin then carried Lenin’s coffin, which made it look like him and Lenin were close friends. He also spoke badly of Trotsky since he never attended the funeral. This dented Trotsky’s reputation but boosted Stalin’s as the people began to “admire him, thinking he was a friend of their loved ex-leader and a strong ruler.” As well as using manipulation and his intelligence, Stalin’s luck played a major role in his rise to power in Russia.

Firstly, even though what Stalin did at Lenin’s funeral was devious and scheming, it wouldn’t have happened if Trotsky was not ill because he would have then been able to attend the funeral. Trotsky continued to blunder and make errors for the remainder of the aftermath of Lenin’s death. He produced ‘The Lessons of October,’ a pamphlet used by Trotsky to attack Kamenev and Zinoviev, however this then led to a vicious response by both, sowing “great tensions” within the party.

As a result Trotsky had to step down as commissar of the army and therefore lost a lot of his political influence. This undoubtedly contributed to Stalin’s rise to power. Trotsky was an arrogant man, another of his attributes that assisted Stalin’s rise. Of all the times Stalin manipulated Trotsky, like the incident at Lenin’s funeral, not once did Trotsky speak out and state what Stalin had been doing. This meant that nobody really knew what Stalin was like behind the scenes. Surely if Trotsky spoke out and exposed Stalin then people would not have admired Stalin so much but on the contrary would have reviled him. Therefore Stalin may not have risen to power so easily if Trotsky did speak out.

There was also the CHEKA and its later iteration, the NKVD, which were effectively was a separate institution to the Party, although, like every other aspect of Soviet life, was dominated by party members. From the beginning of their regime, the Bolsheviks relied on a strong secret, or political, police to buttress their rule. The first secret police, called the Cheka, was established in December 1917 as a temporary institution to be abolished once Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks had consolidated their power. The original Cheka, headed by Feliks Dzerzhinskii, was empowered only to investigate “counterrevolutionary” crimes. But it soon acquired powers of summary justice and began a campaign of terror against the propertied classes and enemies of Bolshevism. Although many Bolsheviks viewed the Cheka with repugnance and spoke out against its excesses, its continued existence was seen as crucial to the survival of the new regime.

Once the Civil War (1918–21) ended and the threat of domestic and foreign opposition had receded, the Cheka was disbanded. Its functions were transferred in 1922 to the State Political Directorate, or GPU, which was initially less powerful than its predecessor. Repression against the population lessened. But under party leader Joseph Stalin, the secret police again acquired vast punitive powers and in 1934 was renamed the People's Comissariat for Internal Affairs, or NKVD. No longer subject to party control or restricted by law, the NKVD became a direct instrument of Stalin for use against the party and the country during the Great Terror of the 1930s.

G. Kenez also points out that Stalin “utilised a vast propaganda machine to further his rise to power and grow his cult of personality.” He had bold portraits and posters of himself made in new artistic styles. Like Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany and Getulio Vargas in New State Brazil, he often appeared alongside children in his artwork, giving off the image that he was a kind of caring father to the Russian people, much like how the Tsar Nicolas II had been known as “Little Papa.”

Sheila Fitzpatrick articulates that “the adulation of Stalin, known as the personality cult, began in the late 1920s but became fully developed after 1933, lasting until his death in 1953”. The cult of personality forced censorship upon the media, arts and education system, while simultaneously manufacturing a glorified image of Stalin and marginalising those who opposed him. This type of propaganda campaign successfully enabled Stalin to be displayed as an omnipresent, god-like leader who was the strong, yet paternal, saviour of the Soviet state. The propaganda machine played a large part in Stalin’s possession of power, as it left no room for other opinions or views.

This extreme censorship disabled any attempt of social anarchy due to the limited span of information that was fed to the Russian people. The initiation of Stalin’s propaganda machine was fundamental for the gain and maintenance of his control over the Soviet Union. Prior to the complete development of the personality cult, basic propaganda was manipulated into all forms which were perceptible by the eyes and ears of Soviet society. The intense propaganda regime began shortly after the death of Lenin, where Stalin “spent the first part of his reign marginalizing his rival, Leon Trotsky” in the attempt of presenting himself as Lenin’s true heir; an attempt which proved successful in 1928. After outmanoeuvring his rivals, Stalin’s propaganda messages were altered to focus heavily on uniting and encouraging the people to actively participate in the radical realignment of the USSR’s industrial, economic and political positions. It was at this point that the cult of personality of this “omnipresent god” slowly crawled into the conventional life of the average Soviet citizen.

His portrait did not just hang in every museum, but in a museum’s every room. Statues of him dignified the façade of every public building. His bust stood in front of all airports, railways and bus stations. Stalin’s reliance on propaganda was rudimentary for the reinforcement of his authority, and visual propaganda was advantageous in formulating an indestructible leadership. However, visual propaganda was not the only form of publication Stalin used. The application of censored, propaganda-based radio was prolific in the manipulation of Russian society, and proved to be especially useful in spanning the propaganda campaign to the vast population who were illiterate.

Stalin’s careful political manoeuvring demonstrates just how deadly a weapon his control of the party machine could be. The rapidity of Zinoviev’s and Trotsky’s expulsions from the Party show just how powerful the ‘socialism in one country’ camp had become. Stalin now faced only Bukharin from the right. The General Secretary could safely return to the left as leader of the “superindustrialisers” with no obvious equal, the old leaders having been expelled and discredited.

Strangely, Stalin was also helped greatly by the weather. This time the peasants could not feed the cities and the right lost the initiative. Bukharin had no credible allies, his Right Opposition with Tomsky and Rykov being denounced as mercilessly as the United Opposition had been. An alliance between him and Kamenev was useless because the latter had lost his Central Committee seat, and all his credibility.

Stalin had been General Secretary of the party since 1922 and had quickly learnt to appreciate the importance of this position within the emerging power structure. As the bureaucracy of the party continued to grow, the power of the General Secretary at its head increased. This was a trend that Lenin had been late to recognise, despite the warnings of Trotsky. Stalin used it to his advantage. In this respect, it could be argued that the seeds of Stalinism were sown by Lenin. Stalin had used his position to collect information on party members and to promote his own supporters within the party. Thus he was able to use the structures of the party to his own advantage. By placing his own supporters into positions within the party, he could outvote his opponents.

In 1924 the Politburo was made up of the following members: Bukharin, - Zinoviev, Kamenev, Rykov, Tomsky, Trotsky and Stalin. By the end of 1930 Stalin was the only surviving member from this group, the others had been removed during the disputes over economic policy in the late 1920s. In their place were cronies of Stalin, such as Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Kalinin. Thus, Stalin was able to ensure the Politburo was in agreement with his own policies. The use of terror against previous opponents sent clear messages to members of the Politburo about the likely consequences of opposing Stalin’s wishes.

Stalin also exerted a great deal of influence via the New Soviet Constitution of 1936. The working of the new Constitution illustrates the failure of democratic institutions to develop despite official statements given by the government. At face value the Constitution seemed to be highly democratic. Stalin himself stated that 'the constitution of the USSR is the only thoroughly democratic constitution in the world'.3 Under the Constitution of 1936 every citizen in the USSR would be given the vote. (This was an important change from the situation which had existed before 1936, where 'bourgeois' classes, such as the kulaks and priests, were excluded from the franchise. The Constitution stated that since these classes no longer existed there was no reason to deny any citizen the right to vote). Civil rights, including freedom of the press, religion and organisation were given under the Constitution. There was also a guarantee of employment that contrasted with the economic situation in many capitalist countries suffering from the effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In practice the Constitution was a fraud. It listed restrictions on the rights of citizens and it was clear that nothing could threaten the dominance of the Communist Party. This was a measure of democracy imposed from above, and within the limits decided by the leadership. Only candidates from the Communist Party were allowed to stand in elections. The government announced that political parties in the democratic sense were a product of conflicts between classes which were generated by capitalism. The Soviet Union did not need more than one political party because these conflicts no longer applied to the Soviet Union. The start of the Great Terror in the following year illustrated the emptiness of many of the statements made in the Constitution.

The wording of the Constitution was directed at foreign governments as well as Soviet citizens. The 1930s had seen a growth in international tension with the rise of aggressive fascist states in Germany and Italy. The Soviet Union was aiming to show its own credentials against fascist states which had severely restricted human rights. In this respect the Constitution was designed to show Britain and France that the Soviet Union might make a satisfactory ally against Hitler. Needless to say, the Constitution “was not taken too seriously either abroad or at home.”38

The failure of political institutions to develop any real power and influence was not caused by Stalin's actions alone. The situation inherited from Lenin had already established political bodies that were weak. Stalin's method of ruling merely continued to hold back the development of real decision- making outside the leadership. By 1924 the organisations of state had been subordinated by those of the party. The party structure was made up of the Party Congress, Central Committee and Politburo; each body being elected by members of the Communist Party. Yet in reality elections were controlled from above with those candidates that were favoured by the leadership automatically being voted into positions. This trend, which was evident before 1924, became fixed under Stalin. As the 1930s went on these institutions, including the Politburo, met less frequently as Stalin increased his control over them.

In the 1920s the Politburo had met weekly but by the mid-1930s meetings were only held about nine times a year. Power became focused in sub-groups set up outside the Politburo over which Stalin could exercise firmer control. Stalin attended important meetings, where he would use the intimidating tactic of walking around the room while others spoke. Even slight research reveals a myriad of cases in which Stalin used open intimidation to shut down opposition, and in many cases, terror. There was a real fear that saying something disagreeable to Stalin would result in execution,42 this was the fate of one General Rychagov who complained about the quality of Soviet aircraft, and merely “disappeared” from Russia.

What these factors highlight, in short, is that Stalin, by the mid 30’s, had built a ruthlessly effective party machine from the groundwork of the old that could not only eliminate any opposition to him, but created such a terror within the minds of those who would dare oppose him that no such challenge ever came, and Stalin would go on to rule Russia for the rest of his life.