ABSTRACT
Joseph Stalin was delegated as General Secretary on the second of April 1922. At this time, Stalin was undoubtedly Lenin’s choice for the post; in part because Stalin was also the choice of the Party bureaucracy, who wanted a strong man not only against the class enemy, but also against the Workers’ Opposition and any encroachment on the Party apparatus by Trotsky. In 1922, Stalin had a good reputation in the Russian Party. The fate of the Soviet state were discussed with relative freedom in the Comintern and criticized with ignorance and crude naIvete, while the responsible Russian leaders, the Party bosses in the provinces, the managers and administrators, were bound by strict discipline to silence on many questions. The developing struggle for control of the Russian Party was the milieu in which the German delegates, in a decisive paroxysm of their country, sought assistance for the final blow against the German bourgeoisie.
