Stalin consolidates power

Between 1922 and 1929, Joseph Stalin rose from a party administrator to the unchallenged ruler of the Soviet Union. In April 1922 he became General Secretary of the Communist Party, a post that let him appoint and promote officials across the country. When Vladimir Lenin died in January 1924, Stalin had already filled the party machine with loyal supporters, and he used that machine to outvote every rival at party congresses.¹²

The struggle grew out of the Russian Revolution of 1917, which created a one-party state with no rules for choosing a new leader. Lenin, ill after a series of strokes, wrote notes in late 1922 and early 1923 warning that Stalin was too rude and should be removed as General Secretary. The party leadership kept the document from wide circulation, and Stalin survived the threat.²⁴

Stalin then played rivals against one another. He first allied with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev against Leon Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army, promoting his own idea of building socialism in one country against Trotsky's call for world revolution. Once Trotsky was sidelined, Stalin turned on Zinoviev and Kamenev with help from Nikolai Bukharin. Trotsky and Zinoviev were expelled from the party in November 1927, and Trotsky was deported in 1929. That same year Stalin broke Bukharin and the party's right wing, ending all organized opposition. His 50th birthday in December 1929 launched a public cult of personality, and he immediately pressed ahead with forced collectivization and breakneck industrial plans that a divided leadership might have resisted.²³