Word: lenin
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Probably the most debated point in postwar Soviet history was the "last testament" supposedly left by Lenin. Most salient point in the alleged document was a proposal to get rid of Stalin "because he is too crude." Stalinists have long denied its genuineness; best Trotskyist argument is that Stalin once quoted it and that Stalin once admitted: "Yes, I am rough, rough on those who roughly and faithlessly try to destroy the 'Communist Party...
...rate, Lenin's proposal could scarcely be carried out against Stalin's strong organization. During this and the subsequent crucial period the chief members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, the Party's ruling body, were Stalin, Trotsky, Grigori Zinoviev, Leo Kamenev, Alexei Rykov, Nikolai Bukharin, Mikhail Tomsky-seven little bottles hanging on the wall. In 1928 Trotsky was exiled from the U.S.S.R., in 1936 Zinoviev and Kamenev were tried for treason, found guilty, shot. Tomsky attended the trial, committed suicide. In 1938 Rykov and Bukharin went before the firing squad...
Three Rooms. His life is mostly spent inside the foreboding walls of that collection of churches, palaces and barracks in Moscow called the Kremlin. His office is large and plain, decorated only by the pictures of Marx and Engels and a death mask in white plaster of Lenin. His private apartment, once the dwelling of the Kremlin's military commander, is only three rooms...
After his death Lenin was sanctified by Stalin. Joseph Stalin has gone a long way toward deifying himself while alive. No flattery is too transparent, no compliment too broad for him. He became the fountain of all Socialist wisdom, the uncontradictable interpreter of the Marxist gospel...
...Joseph Stalin is not given to oratorical pyrotechnics. Only two or three times a year does he appear on the parapet of Lenin's tomb in Red Square, wearing his flat military cap, his military tunic, his high Russian boots. He attends Party meetings but rarely public gatherings. He has made only one radio speech and is not likely to make many more. His thick Georgian accent sounds strange to Russia...