alternatehistory.com

One of the consequences of the defeat of the left opposition is the political destruction of the opponents of the NEP. Stalin's lieutenants, having so recently fought against the left's line of forcibly extracting from the peasants to fuel industry, was not about to suddenly embrace those same policies. The right opposition itself of course continued to support the NEP, leading to a political consensus on domestic economics in the immediate post-Stalin era.

At the same time the succession struggle raged on: while the right-opposition, being composed of a large percentage of the old Leninist era leadership, had a numerical advantage in the Politburo the Stalinists had an advantage almost everywhere else. During Stalin's tenure as General Secretary he had packed the Central Committee, the party apparatus both at the center and in the provinces with his clients and cronies. Those men either have pre-existing patron-client relations with the Politburo Stalinists, or instinctively drew towards men in the "Stalinist center" like Economic Inspectorate (Rabkrin) chief Sergo Ordzhonikidze for protection in the post-Stalin era. This gave the Stalinists a large degree of power to determine who would be elected the new General Secretary.

-Sheila Fitzpatrick, A History of the Soviet Union (2003), Cambridge University Press.