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Originally Posted by PairTheBoard
I read a book years ago, "Stalin" by Alex De Jonge, which I thought was pretty good. I don't remember a lot but if I recall correctly, one reason he rose to prominence before the revolution was his involvement and leadership in robberies which helped keep the party financed.
I think I may have gone through this book at some point or another and don't really remember it for being too exceptional, but you're right - he was a sort of money-making machine for the Bolsheviks because he was really good at racketeering and robbing banks. This, coupled with his expertise on the nationalities question and on running general propaganda schemes in general got him noticed by Lenin in the first place.
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He mastered a technique in party meetings - which he hated - whereby he would just sit and listen while everybody else exhasted themselves with talk. Finally, when the time was right, everybody would be wondering what Stalin would have to say. Having listened to all the positions, Stalin would skillfully find the Center position - which he might or might not really give a damn about - and pronounce that as his position. Being centrally placed it was the only position the group could come together on as Bolshevik. And in coming together around that position they found themselves coming together around Stalin.
During the revolution Trotsky commanded the Red Army so with the loyalty of the army was clearly second most powerful in the Politburo behind Lenin. Had Trotsky leveraged that advantage skillfully he most probably would have succeeded Lenin. But when he was asked if he wanted the position of party secretary he and others in the politburo declined saying, let Stalin do it. He's a workhorse. Stalin gladly took the position which involved the screening of prospective new party members. Stalin realized that those who were recruited by Stalin would be loyal to Stalin. Decades later the party secretary was automatically the Soviet Leader. But in the beginning only Stalin recognized how power would naturally accrue to the man in charge of party membership. Stalin was happy to do that work.
I've thought that Stalin was one of the greatest thieves of all time. As a young man he preferred the company of thieves to the intellectuals of the party. Before he was done he had stolen the entire Russian Empire. It all belonged to him and whatever anyone else was allowed it was just on loan from Stalin.
Overall, I'd say this is a pretty nice post, PTB. I'm obviously going to have to start looking into this further, but I believe some of this new information that's been released from the archives in recent years is somewhat contradicting to the 'Stalin just placed minions wherever there was an opening since he was General Secretary' theory. He obviously had a say, but from what I've read he was oftentimes too busy to have his focuses in this area exclusively, and as a result made mass and impersonal appointments. He also had doubts as to whether these men were going to carry out the will of the party once they were transferred to their new posts.
Regarding Trotsky's incompetence, you're right in that he never leaned on the military in a way that would ensure him power and seemed to try and get too politically radical at the wrong time. I mean, he doesn't use the opportunity to attack Stalin using the
Testament because he doesn't want to seem divisive, yet launches an attack on Stalin and the NEP soon thereafter? Perhaps he thought that Stalin would trip over his own two feet if he chose to stir up dissent within the party publicly, but it only gave Stalin the chance he needed to "look [Trotsky] in the eye and smack him politically in the face" at the Thirteenth Party Congress.
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Originally Posted by loK2thabrain
Most of the Wikipedia stuff about Stalin is decent, especially the stuff that's taken from Service and Montefiore - those are two fairly good biographies. I don't know much about many of those other sources, but definitely pay attention to when they were published as anything before the '90s is probably going to suffer from some sort of the built-up inaccuracies and biases that we saw before the ending of the Cold War. Since then, there's been a lot more discovered about the inner-workings of the party during the time of Stalin and the planet's security isn't perceived to be in jeopardy if a historian publishes a work adding legitimacy to the USSR anymore.
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Originally Posted by coinflip_si
Lenin hated Stalin and never wanted him to ever take over. The fact that Lenin died when he did, combined with Stalin's shrewd political manouvering (for example misinforming Trotsky of Lenin's funeral date so he didn't turn up and thus looked bad) shifted him into a position where he could attain power after Lenin's death. These amongst other factors of course - i learnt that these were the most important in his actual rise to power. Hope this helps.
Stalin certainly had an interesting relationship with Lenin. Service talks about Lenin as a man who despite everything he did to centralize Stalin within his circle of power still was blinded by the standard Russian prejudices against minorities (because Stalin was of course Georgian) until the 11th hour of his life, really. Lenin shared with close associates that he felt Stalin wasn't smart and too shrewd to run the party on many occasions, but nearing the end of his life Stalin was his only link to the government in Moscow as he suffered from recurring health issues so he really had no choice but to keep him around. Once he realized what he'd done, however, it meant little since Stalin was more or less the leader of the developing faction against Trotsky's Left Opposition. This, coupled with the fact that many of the leaders were against the sure-to-develop instability of removing Stalin from the party meant that Lenin's words would fall on deaf ears, and only give Stalin a chance to strengthen himself against Trotsky.
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Originally Posted by A_C_Slater
I recall a story from a Stalin biography by Edward Radzinsky of his time in prison before he ever called himself Stalin (Man of Steel.)
The political prisoners were very hated both by the prisoner's and the guards. The guards used to make the pols "run the gauntlet" which consisted of all the guards standing parallel to one another in two lines. The prisoner was then forced to walk down the line receiving rifle butt blows to the head.
Everyone that did this naturally covered their heads with their arms to soften the blows. When it was Stalin's turn he arrived holding a copy of the Communist Manifesto and preceded to walk through the gauntlet without covering his head freely taking all the blows. When he got the end he was still holding the book, smiling, blood streaming down his entire face. After this incident all the prisoners and even some of the guards did whatever the Man of Steel told them to do.
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Originally Posted by skalf
I wouldn’t be shocked if this was somewhat embellished.
Stalin set up quite a pr. machine when he took power, there were even allegations of historical forgery on his part.
Haha, I would venture to say that Stalin's propaganda machine most likely conjured that story up. Once he had become the central figure in the party by the mid-1930s, Stalin began to re-write the history of the revolution to develop a 'personality cult' around him that would contribute to the Great Terror. Make no mistake, the historical forgery claims were more than allegations.