Word: lenin
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Power & Glory. In May Lenin had a stroke and at the end of the year a second stroke. His place was taken by a troika or triumvirate. Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin. Trotsky was already aware of, and alarmed at, Stalin's stealthy grasp of power. Lenin defended Stalin and warned against a split in the party. He began dictating a testament in which he reviewed his possible successors: "The two most able leaders of the present Central Committee are Stalin and Trotsky . . . Stalin has concentrated enormous power in his hands; and I am not sure that he always knows...
...ruthless quarrel over the succession, Stalin showed his cold genius as a political boss: patience to wait, sureness in striking. Instead of attacking Trotsky he began flattering him, suggested he take Lenin's place as principal speaker at the next Party Congress, which Trotsky nobly refused because it might look as if he were stepping into Lenin's shoes before he was dead. Stalin played a humble role, making reverential references to the sick Lenin and to the need for unity, but succeeded in arousing Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky...
This marked the first public display of a wondrously effective device-the canonization of Lenin-to which Stalin held and preserved all the patents. It enabled Stalin to accuse his enemies not of disagreeing with Stalin, but of disobedience to the gospel of Marxist-Leninism, a monolithic dogma which he could quote, interpret or pervert to meet any need...
...When Lenin died in January 1924, Trotsky was on his way to a Black Sea resort, and failed to return to Moscow for the funeral. He still expected the comrades to call him into the leadership, and proudly made no move himself. It was one of the greatest political misjudgments in history...
...Ideology. Stalin learned something from the purges: the power that ideas have over men's minds. Since the death of Lenin he had repeated, to the point of nausea, the old Leninist slogans. Now he began to develop the myth of Leninist-Stalinist infallibility. Every Soviet writer, poet, musician and painter was expected to devote his energies to enlarging the myth by incessant repetition. The highest peak in Russia was named for him, as were at least 15 towns, innumerable factories and streets. Copies of his collected works were printed in scores of millions. A new metal was called...