ABSTRACT
At the time of Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin was forty-five. He had become a member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party in 1912 and arrived in Petrograd in February 1917 after a period of enforced exile in Siberia. He played only a minor role in the October Revolution and a relatively inconspicuous part in the Civil War. He did, however, spend the period between 1917 and 1924 building up his position within government and the Party. By the time of Lenin’s death he had accumulated the posts of People’s Commissar for Nationalities in 1917, liaison official between the Politburo and the Orgburo in 1919 and General Secretary of the Party in 1922. These roles gave him a greater overview than was possessed by anyone else: the implications are examined in Analysis (1).
