Joseph Stalin
1924–1927: Succeeding Lenin

Lenin died in January 1924. Stalin took charge of the funeral and was a pallbearer. The Politburo embalmed Lenin's corpse and placed it within a mausoleum in Red Square. It was incorporated into a growing personality cult devoted to Lenin, with Petrograd being renamed "Leningrad" that year. To bolster his image as a devoted Leninist, Stalin gave 9 lectures at Sverdlov University on the Foundations of Leninism. During the 13th Party Congress in 1924, Lenin's Testament was read only to the leaders of the provincial delegations. Embarrassed by its contents, Stalin offered his resignation as General Secretary; this act of humility saved him, and he was retained in the position. According to Boris Bazhanov, Stalin was jubilant over Lenin's death while "publicly putting on the mask of grief".

As General Secretary, Stalin had a free hand in making appointments to his own staff. Favouring new party members from proletarian backgrounds to the " Old Bolsheviks " who tended to be middle class university graduates, he ensured he had loyalists dispersed across the regions. Stalin had much contact with young party functionaries, and the desire for promotion led many provincial figures to seek to impress Stalin. Stalin developed close relations with the trio at the heart of the secret police: Felix Dzerzhinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, and Vyacheslav Menzhinsky. In his private life, he divided his time between his Kremlin apartment and a dacha at Zubalova; his wife gave birth to a daughter, Svetlana, in February 1926.

In the wake of Lenin's death, a power struggle emerged to become his successor: alongside Stalin was Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky. Stalin saw Trotsky — whom he personally despised — as the main obstacle to his dominance. While Lenin had been ill Stalin, with Kamenev and Zinoviev had formed an unofficial Triumvirate (known by its Russian name Troika), an alliance aimed at Trotsky. Although Zinoviev was concerned about Stalin's growing authority, he rallied behind him at the 13th Congress as a counterweight to Trotsky, who now led a faction known as the Left Opposition. The Left Opposition believed the NEP conceded too much to capitalism; Stalin was called a "rightist" for his support of the policy. Stalin built up a retinue of supporters in the Central Committee, while the Left Opposition were gradually removed from their positions of influence. He was supported in this by Bukharin, who believed that the Left Opposition's proposals would plunge the Soviet Union into instability.

In late 1924, Stalin moved against Kamenev and Zinoviev, removing their supporters from key positions. In 1925, the two moved into open opposition to Stalin and Bukharin. At the 14th Party Congress in December, they launched an unsuccessful attack against Stalin's faction. Stalin accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of reintroducing factionalism, and thus instability. In mid-1926, Kamenev and Zinoviev joined with Trotsky's supporters to form the United Opposition against Stalin; in October they agreed to stop factional activity under threat of expulsion, and later publicly recanted their views. The factionalist arguments continued, with Stalin threatening to resign in October and December 1926, and again in December 1927. In October 1927, Zinoviev and Trotsky were removed from the Central Committee; the latter was exiled to Kazakhstan and deported from the country in 1929. Some United Opposition members who were repentant were later returned to government.

Stalin was now the party's supreme leader, although he was not the head of government, a task he entrusted to ally Vyacheslav Molotov. Other important supporters on the Politburo were Voroshilov, Lazar Kaganovich, and Sergo Ordzhonikidze, with Stalin ensuring his allies ran state institutions. At this point "Stalin was the leader of the oligarchs but he was far from a dictator". His growing influence was reflected in naming of locations after him; in June 1924 the Ukrainian mining town of Yuzovka became Stalino, and in April 1925, Tsaritsyn was renamed Stalingrad on the order of Mikhail Kalinin and Avel Enukidze. In 1926, Stalin published On Questions of Leninism. Here, he argued for the concept of " socialism in one country ", which he presented as an orthodox Leninist perspective. It nevertheless clashed with established Bolshevik views that socialism could only be achieved globally through the process of world revolution.
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