RRWI: Lenin's other right hand man?

i remember in school reading about another man in the russian revolution whose name escapes me.

He was apparently due to be general secretary, but died of flu in 1918.

As a result Stalin came into power.

Who was he, and what would have happened had he lived?
 
That would be Yakov Sverdlov, the big man in the Urals, I believe. Unfortunately, I don't really know enough about his policies or personality in order to offer any prognosis on how he would fare in a post-civil war Soviet government.
 
Anything can happen. For some strange reason, Russian Communist leaders are awful judges of character. Afterall, Stalin was disregarded as a petty bureaucrat. And then he took over. Khrushchev was trusted by Stalin, and see how that came out when he took over.
 
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