Contenders

• Stalin's strenghts

  • Genuine working class background
  • Hardworking - won a place at seminary
  • Admired Lenin's writings (when he was younger)
  • Party activist
  • Fundraiser (raiding banks)
  • Reputation for toughness ('man of steel')
  • Editor of Pravda
  • Opportunist - 1919, used Role of Head of Peasants Inspectorate to familiarize with workings of Govt
  • Careerist - rapid promotion to Orgburo, Politburo and General Secretary
• Stalins weaknesses

  • Played a little part in the October Revolution
  • Antagonized leading Communists, like Trotsky
  • Reputation for 'industrious mediocrity', 'a grey blur which flickered obscurely but left no trace' (Sukhanov, 1917, died 1940 in a gulag)
• Trotsky's strengths

  • Rivalled Lenin in intellect and charisma
  • Great public speaker
  • Popular with the youth and committed Communists
  • Superb organizer (October Revolution, Civil War)
  • Commissar fir War - strong military support
• Trotsky - weaknesses

  • Personal weakness - arrogant and aloof
  • Lacked political skills - didn't foster support among fellow Communist leaders
  • Radical and potentially divisive views
  • Poor public perception - seen as an outsider and lacking party loyalty
  • Ill health (possible malaria) - absent for key meetings and events (Lenin's funeral)
  • Jewish - atmosphere of anti-Semitism in Russia. Trotsky himself though this would hold him back
  • Couldn't build a powerbase
• Zinoviev - strengths

  • Longstanding Bolshevik - active since 1903
  • Close to Lenin - arrived in Petrograd with Lenin, April 1917
  • Party Secretary in St Petersburg - able to build a powerbase
  • Chairman of Comintern
  • Member of Politburo
  • Good public speaker
• Zinoviev - weaknesses

  • Opposed armed uprising in October 1917
  • Disagreed with Lenin about formation of new govt. - exclusion of other socialists
  • Lacked popular appeal - E.H. Carr, 'weak, vain and ambitious'
  • Not an intellectual
• Kamenev – strengths

  -          Active member of the Bolshevik Party since 1905

  -          Worked closely with Lenin from 1907-1917

  -          Major contributor to party doctrine

  -          Party Sec. in Moscow

  -          Commissar for Foreign Trade

  -          Member of the Politburo

  -          Moderate

  -          E.H. Carr, ‘Intellectually superior to Stalin and Zinoviev’