L.D. Trotsky, G.E. Zinoviev, and L.B. Kamenev: the Failed Successors to V.I. Lenin

On the basis of archival documents the article analyzes circumstances of the removal from power of Lenin’s closest associates - L.D. Trotsky, G.E. Zinoviev and L.B. Kamenev. The purpose of the article is to elucidate the main reasons for Stalin’s victory in an acute competitive political struggle for power after the death of Lenin. The author, using historical-comparative, historical-genetic and historical-psychological methods, believes that it was Kamenev who in the first and second echelons of the party leadership looked the most powerful political figure, taking into account the experience of the revolutionary struggle, party membership experience, authority in the party. The meetings of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee were entrusted exactly to him in the first months of 1924. Trotsky, who had the experience and authority of the second man in the party after Lenin, was second in the list, but was considered,and not without reason, a Menshevik who had only a few years of party experience. The chances of success for Zinoviev, in comparison with the other two contenders for the party leader, were initially minimal, but it was he who from the second half of 1924 was instructed to conduct meetings of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, and it was he who received formal status in the party circles as a probable heir to Lenin. Such a balance is primarily advantageous to Stalin, who with Kamenev and Zinoviev unites his efforts in the struggle against Trotsky. The article concludes that V.I. Lenin and J.V. Stalin should be regarded as a teacher and his faithful disciple, a follower and faithful continuer of the formation of the party nomenclature. Both of them, each in his own way, taught it obedience, nurtured, filtered, relied on its significant political and administrative capabilities, but at the same time feared its unity, not excluding that one day its representatives would use for their own purposes the norms of inner-party democracy provided by them, they would make a bid for a more suitable candidate from their own melieu. The novelty of the author’s conclusions is that after Lenin’s death, in 1924-1925, the party nomenclature relied on Zinoviev as a more acceptable for them political figure. Stalin, on his part, relied on the party nomenclature, without announcing his decision. The surroundings of the leaders,no matter how carefully it was being weeded out, no matter how the external obedience and loyalty to the leader was demonstrated, appeared as a multifaceted, hardly recognizable, serious opponent. It was the party nomenclature that Stalin regarded as the main enemy, and not the associates of Lenin, whom he easily destroyed with its help.

RCP(b)-VKP(b), the ruling party, the political resource of the party leader, V.I. Lenin, I.V. Stalin, L.D. Trotsky, G.E. Zinoviev, L.B. Kamenev, the party nomenclature, inner-party struggle

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