Lenin Dies

Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Bolshevik party and the first leader of Soviet Russia, died in January 1924 at the age of 53. His death opened a struggle for succession that ended with Joseph Stalin as the dominant figure in the Soviet Union, and it shaped the country's path toward one-man dictatorship over the following decade.

Lenin had led the Bolsheviks to power in the October Revolution of 1917 and guided the new state through the Civil War and the introduction of the New Economic Policy in 1921, which allowed limited private trade. His health, however, was failing. He suffered his first stroke in May 1922, a second in December of that year, and a third in March 1923 that left him largely unable to speak or take part in politics. In his last months he dictated notes later known as his "testament," which criticized several senior colleagues. Most historians agree that it expressed concern about Stalin's power as general secretary of the party and suggested he be removed from that post, though debate continues over how fully Lenin intended this and how the notes were handled.

When Lenin died, the party leadership was a collective, with no obvious heir. Leon Trotsky, who had built the Red Army, was the best-known rival, while Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Nikolai Bukharin, and Stalin were also prominent. The leadership chose to keep Lenin's testament from wide circulation, and Stalin, who held the general secretaryship, used that office to influence appointments and build support in the party apparatus. He also presented himself as Lenin's faithful pupil, notably in funeral arrangements and in lectures on "Leninism." Trotsky's absence from the funeral, which he later blamed on misleading information from Stalin, hurt his standing.

Lenin's body was embalmed and placed on display in a mausoleum on Red Square, an act that some old Bolsheviks, including Lenin's widow Nadezhda Krupskaya, opposed. It helped turn Lenin into the centerpiece of a quasi-sacred state cult.

Over the next few years Stalin allied with different factions in turn, first with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky, then with Bukharin against them, and finally turned on Bukharin as well. Trotsky was expelled from the party in 1927 and exiled from the country in 1929. By the end of the 1920s Stalin held supreme authority, which he used to launch forced collectivization, rapid industrialization, and, in the 1930s, mass political terror. Historians still debate how far Stalinism grew from Lenin's own methods and how far it broke with them, but Lenin's death was the pivotal moment that made Stalin's rise possible.