HISTORY CAMBRIDGE A2 (PAPER 4)PRESENTATION 8

STALIN MODULE3. RELATION WITH TROTSKY AND OTHER SOVIET LEADERS

THE PRINCIPAL LEADERS OF THE

COMMUNIST PARTY

FIRST POLITBUROOn August 18, 1917 Lenin set up a political bureau – known first as Narrow composition and, after October 23, 1917, as Political bureau – specifically to direct the Revolution, with only seven members (Lenin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin, Sokolnikov, Bubnov), but this precursor did not outlast the event; the Central Committee continued with the political functions. However, due to practical reasons, usually fewer than half of the members attended the regular Central Committee meetings during this time, even though they decided all key questions.The 8th Party Congress in 1919 formalized this reality and re-established what would later on become the true center of political power in the Soviet Union. It ordered the Central Committee to appoint a five-member Politburo to decide on questions too urgent to await full Central Committee deliberation. The original members of the Politburo were Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Joseph Stalin, Lev Kamenev and Nikolai Krestinsky.

VLADIMIR ILYICH LENINVladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, alias Lenin, 22 April 1870 – 21 January 1924, was the Russian communist revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as head of government of the Russian Republic from 1917 to 1918, of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic from 1918 to 1924, and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, the former Russian Empire (including both Russia as well as various non-Russian territories it had controlled) became a one-party communist state governed by the Bolshevik Communist Party. Ideologically a Marxist, his political theories are known as Leninism.Lenin played a leading role in the October Revolution of 1917, which overthrew the Provisional Government and established a one-party state under the new Communist Party.

LEON TROTSKYCommunist Leon Trotsky helped ignite the Russian Revolution of 1917, and built the Red Army afterward. He was exiled and later assassinated by Soviet agents. Born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein on November 7, 1879, Leon Trotsky's revolutionary activity as a young man spurred his first of several ordered exiles to Siberia. He waged Russia's 1917 revolution alongside Vladimir Lenin. As commissar of war in the new Soviet government, he helped defeat forces opposed to Bolshevik control. As the Soviet government developed, he engaged in a power struggle against Joseph Stalin, which he lost, leading to his exile again and, eventually, his murder.

JOSEPH VISSARIONOVICH STALINJoseph Vissarionovich Stalin, 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953, was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state.Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Sokolnikov and Bubnov.Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917, Stalin was appointed General Secretary of the party's Central Committee in 1922. He subsequently managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenin's criticisms (in the postscript of his testament) and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, concurrently serving as the Premier of the Soviet Union from 1941 onward.

LEV BORISOVICH KAMENEVLev Borisovich Kamenev, 18 July 1883 – 25 August 1936, born Rozenfeld, was a Bolshevik revolutionary and a prominent Soviet politician. He was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution: Lenin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Trotsky, Stalin, Sokolnikov and Bubnov.Kamenev was the brother-in-law of Leon Trotsky. He served briefly as the equivalent of the first head of state of Soviet Russia in 1917, and from 1923-24 as acting Premier in the last year of Vladimir Lenin's life.Joseph Stalin viewed him as a source of discontent and a source of opposition to his own leadership; Kamenev fell out of favour and was executed on 25 August 1936, aged 53, after a brief show trial.

NIKOLAY NIKOLAYEVICH KRESTINSKYNikolay Nikolayevich Krestinsky, 13 October 1883 – 15 March 1938, was a Russian Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet politician.Krestinsky joined the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903 and sided with its Bolshevik faction. After the February Revolution, which overthrew monarchy in Russia, he proved to be a capable organizer and was elected to the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party on 3 August 1917. He was made a member of the first Soviet Orgburo on 16 January 1919 and the first Politburo on 25 March 1919. He was also made a member of the Central Committee Secretariat on 29 November 1919 and served as the party's Responsible Secretary for the next 1.5 years.