GiantMonkeyMan
Banned
In trying to conceive of the ways Trotsky could have ascended to power in the Soviet Union, I feel it important to understand how Stalin did in OTL. At one time Stalin was a member of the party's Central Committee, its Politbureau, its Orgbureau, People's Commissar of Nationalities, and People's Commissar of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate and then he also ascended to General Secretary in 1922. Preobrazhensky put forward complaints about this ridiculous accumulation of power in the Eleventh Party Congress in 1922 but it was all basically pushed aside on the basis that the Party lacked decent people to take up these roles - so many dedicated individuals having died in the civil war either in the fighting or due to famine and illness and also the basic lack of diversity of leaders in the wake of the Left-SR uprising.
Most importantly was Stalin's role within the party to appoint and demote members throughout the nation. He was appointed to the role of Uchraspred within the Orgbureau in 1920 that was basically an administrative role to help organise the growing soviet state and the various regional Party organisations and facilitate the smooth running of the nation. Prof Merle Fainsod in 'How Russia is Ruled' writes: "the Uchraspred concentrated first on filling party posts. Appointments to the highest party positions came under the jurisdiction of the Orgbureau.... The Uchraspred rapidly extended its control down through the guberniya or provincial level. By the beginning of 1923 its controls reached the uezd, or county level. The report of the Uchraspred to the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923 indicated that more than ten thousand assignments had been made in the preceding year. Stalin, in his organizational report to the congress, made no effort to conceal the range of Uchraspred's activities; indeed, he revealed that it was expanding its jurisdiction into the state apparatus."
So we see from this administrative position, and the position of the Orgraspred that Stalin's ally Kaganovich took up in 1921, that thousands of Party members and state officials basically owed their personal fortune to the intervention of Stalin who could also demote members on a spurious basis with only the citation of 'party discipline' being needed to send someone from the political heartland in Petrograd and Moscow to Irkutsk or the Ukraine. This was all justified, again, on the basis of the chaos of the civil war killing off too many dedicated revolutionaries and disrupting the basic running of the nation in the midst of famine - and it's certainly true that the civil war was a shit period and things needed to get done.
However, it's highly unlikely that someone like Trotsky would have taken on such a back-seat role like Stalin did. Trotsky was a prominent political figure with many other responsibilities, including the reorganisation of the Red Army and the foreign office, as opposed to someone who moved the strings behind the scenes. I think it entirely possible that another individual in such a position or a different group of individuals would have led to the Party being organised in a very different manner by the time of Lenin's death - if not in its organisational structures then at least it could very much differ in terms of who occupied certain positions and who they owed their loyalty to.
If we look at the Central Committee in 1919/1920 (1) (2) for alternative candidates who could have taken on the Uchraspred role and therefore changed the make-up of the Party such that it would have favoured Trotsky's ascension to power we have a few possibilities. Many of them were Trotsky supporters or members of the Joint Opposition who Stalin would eventually have purged or (perhaps, if we are being generous) there were others who would go on to be supporters of Stalin who wouldn't have had his intent to concentrate power. There's also the likes of Yakov Sverdlov who had vitally important roles but died in the civil war who could have taken on these administrative roles and changes the balance of power within the nation. Virtually anyone different taking on such an important administrative role could have fundamentally altered the make-up of the Party such that Trotsky would have seen greater support upon Lenin's death.
Most importantly was Stalin's role within the party to appoint and demote members throughout the nation. He was appointed to the role of Uchraspred within the Orgbureau in 1920 that was basically an administrative role to help organise the growing soviet state and the various regional Party organisations and facilitate the smooth running of the nation. Prof Merle Fainsod in 'How Russia is Ruled' writes: "the Uchraspred concentrated first on filling party posts. Appointments to the highest party positions came under the jurisdiction of the Orgbureau.... The Uchraspred rapidly extended its control down through the guberniya or provincial level. By the beginning of 1923 its controls reached the uezd, or county level. The report of the Uchraspred to the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923 indicated that more than ten thousand assignments had been made in the preceding year. Stalin, in his organizational report to the congress, made no effort to conceal the range of Uchraspred's activities; indeed, he revealed that it was expanding its jurisdiction into the state apparatus."
So we see from this administrative position, and the position of the Orgraspred that Stalin's ally Kaganovich took up in 1921, that thousands of Party members and state officials basically owed their personal fortune to the intervention of Stalin who could also demote members on a spurious basis with only the citation of 'party discipline' being needed to send someone from the political heartland in Petrograd and Moscow to Irkutsk or the Ukraine. This was all justified, again, on the basis of the chaos of the civil war killing off too many dedicated revolutionaries and disrupting the basic running of the nation in the midst of famine - and it's certainly true that the civil war was a shit period and things needed to get done.
However, it's highly unlikely that someone like Trotsky would have taken on such a back-seat role like Stalin did. Trotsky was a prominent political figure with many other responsibilities, including the reorganisation of the Red Army and the foreign office, as opposed to someone who moved the strings behind the scenes. I think it entirely possible that another individual in such a position or a different group of individuals would have led to the Party being organised in a very different manner by the time of Lenin's death - if not in its organisational structures then at least it could very much differ in terms of who occupied certain positions and who they owed their loyalty to.
If we look at the Central Committee in 1919/1920 (1) (2) for alternative candidates who could have taken on the Uchraspred role and therefore changed the make-up of the Party such that it would have favoured Trotsky's ascension to power we have a few possibilities. Many of them were Trotsky supporters or members of the Joint Opposition who Stalin would eventually have purged or (perhaps, if we are being generous) there were others who would go on to be supporters of Stalin who wouldn't have had his intent to concentrate power. There's also the likes of Yakov Sverdlov who had vitally important roles but died in the civil war who could have taken on these administrative roles and changes the balance of power within the nation. Virtually anyone different taking on such an important administrative role could have fundamentally altered the make-up of the Party such that Trotsky would have seen greater support upon Lenin's death.