As the official responsible for party appointments, Krestinsky took a conciliatory line towards dissenters, for which he was openly attacked by Grigory Zinoviev, who was backed up by Joseph Stalin and others who later formed the Stalinist faction within the party. At the same time, Leon Trotsky was under attack from the same direction in a dispute over the role of the trade unions, in which Krestinsky backed Trotsky, against Lenin. At the end of the Tenth Party Congress he was sacked as the party's responsible secretary in April 1921, and replaced by Vyacheslav Molotov (and a year later by Stalin), and removed from the Politburo, Orgburo, and the Central Committee.
