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[|Joseph Stalin] was associated with Russia, he spent his first years after the revolution building his post as general secretary secretly into the most powerful one in the communist party. After [|Lenin's death] in 1924, Stalin, Kamenev, and Zinoviev governed against Trotsky and Bukharin. Soon after, Stalin switched sides and joined with Bukharin. Together, they fought against Trotsky, Kamenev, and Zinoviev. By 1928 Stalin's supremacy was complete. From this year, he could be said to have exercised control over the party and the country, although it was not official yet. The final stage of Stalin's rise to power was the ordered [|assassination of Trotsky] in Mexico in 1940, where he had lived since 1936 (he was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929). Indeed, after Trotsky's death only two members of the "Old Bolsheviks" remained - Stalin himself and his foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov. Throughout his years, he believed that everything should be collectivized and owned by the government such as farms and crops. He believed strongly in socialism as he thought that it helps a country get better and more advanced. He also joined into the underground revolutionary marxist movement. A movement devoted to the views of Karl marx and frederick eagles, who believed in the political system of socialism. In 1922 he became secretary general; this gave him control over admissions, training, assignments, promotions, and disciplinary matters. It also ranked him the most powerful man in Soviet Russia after Lenin. And finally, In 1927 he succeeded in defeating the entire opposition and in elimination its leaders from the party. He then adopted much of its domestic program by starting a five- year plan of industrial development and by executing it with a degree of recklessness which angered many of his former supporters who then formed an opposition to him. This opposition was also defeated and Stalin had gained total control over the party, the state, and the entire communist international.