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The Eleventh Party Congress (March–April 1922) specifically addressed this issue. Lenin himself complained that communists frequently adopted the ways of the pre-revolutionary ministries and thus launched the attack on bureaucratism. The delegates resolved to tighten discipline in lower organs and to combat the internal factionalism that had earlier been outlawed but by no means eradicated. Partly in an effort to reach these objectives, the Central Committee elected I. V. Stalin as General Secretary—i.e. head of the Secretariat, a post with extensive appointment powers. Although he would use these prerogatives for his own political advancement, the initial intent was to reform the personnel apparatus of the party.

Lenin’s partial incapacitation by a cerebral haemorrhage in May 1922 seriously altered the dynamics of Soviet politics, however, and the reformism adopted at the Eleventh Congress never ran its intended course. Lenin’s deteriorating health—he suffered additional strokes in December 1922 and March 1923—triggered a succession crisis and exacerbated factional conflict that lasted well beyond his death in January 1924. Uncertainty and instability prevailed at the top. Lenin’s authority, unparalleled if not always unchallenged, was personal rather than institutional. His dominance derived from his experience, intellect, and political acumen, not any title or office. To replace Lenin, it was necessary not just to name a successor, but to reconsider the very concept of leadership in the party.

Lenin himself contributed to the contentiousness when he dictated his so-called ‘testament’ in December 1922, emphasizing the shortcomings of all major political figures. It declared that Nikolai Bukharin was ‘the favourite of the whole party’ and its ‘most significant theoretician’, but weak on dialectics and somewhat scholastic. Lenin noted that Grigorii Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev had wavered at the time of the October Revolution—which was ‘not, of course, accidental’. Of the younger Bolsheviks, G. L. Piatakov was too preoccupied with administration ‘to be relied on in a serious political situation’. And Lenin especially feared that a rivalry between Stalin and Leon Trotsky might split the party. Although Trotsky was ‘certainly the most able man in the present Central Committee’, he was given to ‘excessive self-confidence’ and an exaggerated concern with ‘the administrative aspect of affairs’. Stalin as General Secretary ‘had concentrated boundless power in his hands’, and Lenin worried whether Stalin would ‘always know how to use this power with sufficient caution’. In a postscript he added that ‘Stalin is too rude’ to be General Secretary and recommended that ‘the comrades consider removing Stalin from this post’.

The succession struggle commenced even before Lenin died. In 1923 and despite a pledge of collective leadership, a triumvirate of Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev accused Trotsky of Bonapartist aspirations. At the same time, Lenin launched his own assault against Stalin: he strongly criticized Stalin’s treatment of minority nationalities and threatened to sever relations for Stalin’s insulting behaviour towards Nadezhda Krupskaia, Lenin’s wife. Lenin also asked Trotsky, Stalin’s most bitter rival, to represent his views at the forthcoming Twelfth Party Congress of April 1923. But Trotsky, for reasons still unclear, chose not to present Lenin’s case against Stalin and thereby squandered a unique opportunity to use Lenin’s authority against Stalin. By December 1923 the triumvirs had prevailed in party infighting and put Trotsky and his followers on the defensive.