Stalin’s rise to power

democratic centralism

Tập thể lãnh đạo, cá nhân phụ trách, theo đó mọi thành viên được thảo luận tự do nhưng một khi quyết định đã được đưa ra, tất cả phải tuân thủ thống nhất; cấp dưới phục tùng cấp trên và số ít phục tùng số nhiều

Authoritarian rule

• One party state

• Democratic centralism

• Ban on factions

• Police state. CheKa, concentration camps, purges

• Bureaucratic state

• Imposed economic policies

• Prohibition of public worship

Struggle for power

After Lenin's death in January 1924, there developed a struggle for power between the leading members of the Politburo.  The key contenders were: Leon Trotsky (who seemed to be the natural successor to Lenin), Josef Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Alexei Rykov and Nikolai Bukharin.

Lenin enrolment

Between 1923 and 1925, the Party had set out to

increase the number of workers in its ranks. This was known as ‘the Lenin

enrolment’. It resulted in the membership of the CPSU rising from 340,000

in 1922 to 600,000 by 1925.

Triumvirate against Trotsky

Stalin + Zinoviev and Kamenev

Trotsky’s handicaps:

• Jew

• Ambitious and overly influential

• Intellectual

• Former Menshevik

1924-1927

Stalin-Trotsky ideological struggle

• NEP: continue or abandon?

• Modernization: persuasion or coercion?

• Permanent revolution or socialism in one country?

1925-1926

• Zinoviev and Kamenev against Stalin

• Trotsky joins Zinoviev and Kamenev

• Defeated by Stalin. Zinoviev and Kamenev replaced by Molotov and Kirov

Right opposition

1928-1929
Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky against Stalin

Ideology: against Stalin’s state procurements

Stalin’s victory:

• Through ideology of “circle of enemies”

• Through control over party

circle of enemies

we are surrounded by capitalist → we need to survive → we need soldiers, weapons → industry, resources → trade, investment → grain → incentivize peasants