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Excerpt from A History of the Politburo, from 1923 to 1939
At times, it is the tiniest of things by which history is made. "You had the rudeness to call my wife on the telephone and berate her." A simple sentence, with little consequence the vast majority of the time. But in February 1923, the sentence was uttered by Vladmir Lenin to Iosif Stalin, and it had the greatest of all effects.

Stalin and Lenin had hardly gotten along just before this, with Lenin describing Stalin as "too rude" in January 1923, and some historians propose that the sentence became merely the proximate cause by which things came to a head. Stalin, normally the consummate politician, somehow failed to deal with this brief falling out[1], and it was this mistake which lead to Lenin disturbing Stalin's power shortly thereafter. When his testament was released at the 12th Party Congress following his third stroke, the Stalinists were not in a strong enough position to suppress it, and "Lenin's Testament" came to be the defining document by which the Soviet state would be built in the aftermath of Lenin's death.

Excerpt from Early 20th Century Soviet Politics
The Politburo at the time was a relatively large segment of the Central Committee. In late 1924, however, the Central Committee was greatly expanded to 100 members. Lenin's Testament would greatly change the political course of each full member of the Politburo. All of them (save Stalin) would, however, maintain their membership in the Politburo for quite some time.

It was, for Stalin, however, the end. His position of unchecked power as Secretary-General was gone, his faction was scattered and he was soon to be forced into the political wilderness. The "Stalinist" faction was more than willing to abandon their former comrade.

For Trotsky, it was painful; though Lenin's Testament praised him with one word, it decried him with the next. Ultimately, it said that he was a poor politician, but an able administrator, and though he would take this to heart, he had no comrades at this point. He would end up leading the Trotskyist faction of the CC until it joined the left coalition.

Kamenev, although he would later join the left-wing faction, kept was too busy keeping his head low in an attempt to avoid the fallout from the destruction of his former ally, Stalin.

Zinoviev, on the other hand, was in more-or-less the same position, but refused to let it beat him. He lead a left-wing coalition of "moderates," who felt Trotsky was too extreme and too anti-peasant, often referred to as the Zinovievites.

Bukharin and Rykov, meanwhile, formed a close friendship and would end up leading the right-wing (sometimes called Bukharinite) faction. Tomsky remained allied with the two, though he did not get the same prominence.

[1] POD; historically, Stalin apologized to Lenin's wife. Thanks to him being suddenly on much worse ground with the two, Lenin's Testament is released and read at the 12th Party Congress, and without suppression, rather than the 13th with suppression as it was historically.


Thoughts? This is a fairly new subject in history for me and I don't have a lot of sources which go over it. Any sources on the individual personalities and positions of the politburo members would be greatly appreciated.
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