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Relations with Lenin

His relations with Lenin have been a source of intense historical debate. Historian Paul Le Blanc and philosopher Michael Lowy described Lenin and Trotsky as the "widely leading figures in the Russia's Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 as well as in the final years of the rising world communist movement". They characterized Lenin and Trotsky as "fierce adversaries" during the early years of the Russian socialist movement but described the duo as having reached a convergence and a substantial agreement in 1917 before colluding their efforts to achieve the October Revolution. They also highlighted the mutual appreciation and respect between Lenin and Trotsky with the former seeking to work closely with Trotsky on the Iskra newspaper, prior to their polemical disagreements, and Lenin acknowledging that his theory on permanent revolution "happened to be right" after 1917.

However, Swain viewed the notion that Trotsky was Lenin's natural heir a myth and cited several scholars such as Erik Van Rees, James White and Richard B.Day who Swain claimed had challenged the traditional characterization of their relationship. North specifically rejected this position and argued Swain sought to discredit historical works appreciative of Trotsky. North continued to argue that Swain gave an insufficient consideration of the "complex historical, political, social and theoretical issues that arise in any serious study of the Lenin-Trotsky relationship". He also asserted that Swain had distorted and misrepresented the positions of the cited scholars. Le Blanc also disputed Swain's representation of Trotsky and referenced various historians which included E.H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Moshe Lewin, Ronald Suny and W. Bruce Lincoln across different generations. According to Le Blanc, these historians on balance had tilted "toward the view that Lenin's desired "heir" was collective responsibility in which Trotsky placed an important role and within which Stalin would be dramatically demoted (if not removed)". Similarly, historian Roy Medvedev noted the close association of Trotsky and Lenin in the Soviet republic throughout the period of 1921–24. Medvedev mentioned a number of public commendations such as "greetings in honour of comrades Lenin and Trotsky were announced at many rallies and meetings, and portraits of Lenin and Trotsky hung on the walls of many Soviet and party institutions".

Initially, Lenin turned down the leading position of Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars when the Bolsheviks formed a new government, after the October Revolution in 1917, and suggested Trotsky for the position. However, Trotsky refused the position and other Bolsheviks insisted that Lenin assume principal responsibility which thereafter resulted in Lenin eventually accepting the role of chairman. On a separate occasion, Lenin expressed hostility to the early attempts by the triumvirate to remove Trotsky from the leadership. In a 1922 memo written to Kamenev, he chastised the efforts by the Central Committee to "throw Trotsky overboard" as the "height of stupidity. If you do not consider me already hopelessly foolish, how can you think of that ?". In his last testament, Lenin urged the wider party circles to not use and hold Trotsky's non-Bolshevik past against him.

Soviet writer Maxim Gorky recollected Lenin in the first version of his sketch, V.I. Lenin, dismissing rumours of an alleged political difference between himself and Trotsky with the words: "There are many lies, and it seems, particularly many lies about me and Trotsky". Gorky also stated that Lenin made an approving assessment of Trotsky due to his military organisation of the army in a single year. In the view of Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin was "pleased with the definite manner" of Trotsky's theoretical comprehension of diverging Russian revolutionary movements during their first meeting in 1902. She similarly expressed this view in a personal note after Lenin's death that her husband's attitude towards Trotsky had "not changed until his death" since their initial meeting in London. In his final months, Lenin read several of Trotsky's works among a wider collection of books which interested him. Lenin read Problems of Everyday Life in the last month of his life and instructed Krupskaya to read him a passage from another of Trotsky's books that characterised Marxism and Leninism. Lenin also read Trotsky's pamphlet, The New Course, on the day prior to his death. According to Stalin's secretary, Boris Bazhanov, Lenin "in general leaned towards a collegial leadership, with Trotsky in the first position".