"It's an endless struggle, a game of thrones. Just when you think it's finally settled, a new conspiracy will emerge. —Freud Lannister, Game of Thrones.
On January 21, 1924, Lenin, the founder of the Russian Revolution and the founder of Soviet power, died. On his deathbed, this great man, who is regarded as the "leader of the October Revolution", left a significant will. In his will, Lenin mentioned six possible successors to Soviet power: Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and Pidakov.
Lenin did not speak highly of Stalin, he wrote in his will: "Comrade Stalin, after becoming general secretary, was too centralized, and this is a shortcoming. Lenin also warned of caution to limit Stalin's power.
Despite Lenin's reservations about Stalin, fate played tricks. Over the next few years, Stalin, with skill and determination, gradually seized the supreme power of Soviet power. The remaining 5 people mentioned in the will fell into a tragic fate.
Revolutionary fellow travelers
Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, and Pidakov, like Stalin, were all outstanding contributors to the Great October Revolution. They fought side by side with Lenin in the difficult underground struggle, fighting hard to overthrow the tsarist autocracy and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Trotsky was hailed as the "organizer of the October Revolution", a Ukrainian from a wealthy family who joined the movement against the Tsar from a young age. He was not only a theoretician and strategist of the Bolshevik Party, but also a brilliant military strategist, and it was Trotsky who formed and trained the proletarian Red Army that had defeated the old Russian warlords.
Trotsky
Zinoviev was a close comrade-in-arms of Lenin, the son of a Ukrainian peasant who had been with Lenin since he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1903. He was a veteran activist of the Bolshevik Party and the first chairman of the Executive Committee of the Third International.
Zinoviev
Kamenev, on the other hand, was a veteran Bolshevik revolutionary from Moscow workers, who was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned, and then fled abroad, fighting alongside Lenin, Trotsky and others.
Kamenev
Also born in Moscow, Bukharin was one of the leading theoreticians of the Bolshevik Party, and he was not only a famous economist, but also the most prominent thinker of the early years of Soviet power.
Bukharin
As for Pidakov, the Ukrainian was forced to flee the country after organizing the workers' movement several times. In Switzerland, he worked with Lenin, Trotsky and others, becoming an important figure in Trotsky's opposition.
Pidakov
During the October Revolution and the Civil War, these five people made indelible contributions to the overthrow of the old system and the establishment of a new regime. However, after Lenin's death, their fates went their separate ways.
The taste of power
After Lenin's death, Stalin slowly came to power. As general secretary, he took control of the party apparatus and began to crowd out dissidents, consciously or unconsciously. The first to be marginalized was Trotsky, the "organizer of the October Revolution", who was removed from the Central Committee by Stalin while recuperating from illness, expelled from the party in 1925 and expelled from the country in 1929.
Next came Zinoviev and Kamenev. The two old Bolsheviks, who had been at odds with Stalin, were considered "oppositionists" and were both expelled from the party and the Soviet Union between 1926 and 1927.
Bukharin, on the other hand, was allied with Stalin for a time, but when he proposed an economic course different from Stalin's, he could not escape the fate of being attacked. In 1929, Bukharin was expelled from the party, exiled, tortured, and finally sentenced to death in 1938 at the Moscow Trial. Pidakov's fate was also unusually bumpy. The veteran revolutionary, who had fought alongside Trotsky, was expelled from the party, then rejoined, but soon expelled again, and was finally executed in 1937.
In this way, Stalin, with the power in his hands, defeated his former fellow revolutionaries one by one, and by 1929 he had completely controlled the core of power in the Soviet Union.
Power drives people crazy, and Stalin is a prime example. Once in his hands on the highest power, he showed a frightening side.
Stalin era
In order to consolidate his personal dictatorship, Stalin launched the "Moscow Trial" between 1936 and 1938 that shocked the world, and tens of thousands of old Bolsheviks, Red Army generals and intellectuals were hanged or exiled in this "conspiracy and fraud".
It is estimated that more than 600,000 party members and cadres were censored during the two years, of whom about 750,000 were executed, and millions of intellectuals, workers and peasants were killed or exiled in the Holocaust.
In this catastrophe, none of Stalin's former allies were spared. Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Pidakov were convicted and executed in public "public trials."
The only survivor was Trotsky, who had long since gone into exile, but Stalin would never allow this stubborn opposition to exist, and on 20 August 1940 a group of agents kidnapped Trotsky in Mexico City. In this way, of the six who fought alongside Lenin, only Stalin remained.
Through a ruthless purge, Stalin finally single-handedly took control of the Soviet Union. During his 30-year reign, he built the Soviet Union into an industrial and military power with an iron fist, but the Stalin era was also a dark and brutal era, with his personal autocracy and massive political persecution that led to the persecution, exile, and execution of millions, if not millions, of innocent civilians and intellectuals. The collective farming movement led to the starvation of millions of peasants, and the living standards of workers were severely affected by large-scale industrialization.
Nevertheless, the Soviet Union under Stalin had some remarkable achievements. Under his leadership, the pace of industrialization in the Soviet Union accelerated, and great progress was made in education, science and technology. In World War II, Stalin played an outstanding leadership skill, commanded the Soviet army to finally defeat Hitler's Nazi Germany, and made indelible contributions to the anti-fascist cause.
After the war, Stalin did not relax his totalitarian rule, but on the contrary, he intensified his crackdown on intellectuals and ethnic minorities. This campaign, which lasted for several years, again led to the persecution and murder of tens of thousands of innocent people.
It was not until March 5, 1953 that the "Iron Ruler" finally died, ending his 30-year dictatorship.