ABSTRACT
Throughout the revolutionary period, the Bolshevik Party leaders looked upon their colleague Joseph Stalin as a average sort of man–uneducated, ignorant of foreign languages, bad speaker, poor writer, colorless, intellectually indolent, and lacking in all breadth or originality of thought. Lenin's estimate of him may have been somewhat higher, but even Lenin valued Stalin as a reliable and willing subordinate, an efficient organizer of various party enterprises and an adroit intriguer in internal party politics. In the period between October and the beginning of the Civil War, the party was ruled by a triumvirate consisting of Lenin, Stalin and Sverdlov. When the Eighth Congress, in March 1919, considered the reorganization of the Central Committee, it adopted a plan prepared by Stalin and Lenin to distribute the work of the Central Committee among three newly created bodies: the Political Bureau, Organizational Bureau, and Secretariat. Peaceful relations between Stalin and Trotsky would be the best guarantee against a schism in the party.
