Stalin’s Rise to Power

Worksheet 4.1

Stalin’s Rise to Power

This is an extract from The Revolution Betrayed by Leon Trotsky, published in 1936 (before the Show Trials began). It is taken from Chapter 5, ‘The Soviet Thermidor’, in which he recounts how Stalin came to power.

Questions:

1. In the second paragraph, Trotsky lists the faults of the ‘new’ Bolshevik Party. What was the Leninist Levy? (When was it introduced and whose idea was this?)

Availing itself of the death of Lenin, the ruling group announced a ‘Leninist levy.’ The gates of the party, always carefully guarded, were now thrown wide open. Workers, clerks, petty officials, flocked through in crowds. The political aim of this maneuver was to dissolve the revolutionary vanguard in raw human material, without experience, without independence, and yet with the old habit of submitting to the authorities. The scheme was successful. By freeing the bureaucracy from the control of the proletarian vanguard, the ‘Leninist levy’ dealt a death blow to the party of Lenin.

2. In the third paragraph, a passage links the Bolshevik Revolution to the French Revolution. Why does Trotsky refer here to Thermidorians and Jacobins?

gives the example of the Jacobins and the Thermidorians because tries to explain that as well as Thermidorians becoming known emerge from the circle of the Jacobins same so those who wanted to obtain the heritage of Lenin first time had to enter institutions of the ruling party and then fight for what they wanted to get it was Lenin's heritage.

3. In the fourth paragraph, Trotsky says that of Lenin’s Politburo, only Stalin remains in power. What happened to the others?

In the fourth paragraph we can see that Stalin took charge, this is what Stalin did with the designated successors who had to assume power after Lenin's death, Two of its members, Zinoviev and Kamenev, collaborators of Lenin throughout many years as émigrés, are enduring ten-year prison terms for a crime which they did not commit. Three other members, Rykov , Bukharin and Tomsky , are completely removed from the leadership, but as a reward for submission occupy secondary posts and Trotsky death was involved in dubious circumstances, all these were the successors of Lenin that were removed one by one until there were none and after Stalin took power.

4. In the final paragraph, Trotsky makes some disparaging remarks about Stalin’s supporters. Is he, do you think, a reliable source? Do you accept his judgement?

to me is not a reliable source because who is to say that Stalin is right or wrong, it can not be wrong, can not make mistakes, and that is always right, that may be this is the opinion of him and it is well that you have your opinion and maybe others accept their judgment, in my case I do not think that he is a reliable source

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