Which opposition group had the best shot at stopping Stalin?

After the death of Lenin the power struggle within the Bolesheviks between factions of the party (generally) centred around Trotsky on the Left, Stalin in the Centre and Bukharin on the Right.

Stalin rather expertly played the factions against each other, using the Right opposition to cower the Left before eventually turning on Bukharin and Rykov. I'm generalising a bit as the machinations of the Soviet Union in the 20's were Byzantine.

But which of these groups had the best chance of stopping Stalins rise to power. Could the Left successfully convince the rest of the party of the danger of Stalins dominance of the bureaucracy or the Right coalesce around Bukharin to counter Stalin. Is there even the possibility of another grouping that spotted the dangers of Stalin in advance?
 
The Red Army might have thrown a coup if word of Stalin's plans for purging it had somehow been leaked before he had started doing so.
 

RousseauX

Donor
The Red Army might have thrown a coup if word of Stalin's plans for purging it had somehow been leaked before he had started doing so.
the red army was firmly under control of the party, the idea of an army coup was always an illusion

the commissars were there for a reason
 

RousseauX

Donor
After the death of Lenin the power struggle within the Bolesheviks between factions of the party (generally) centred around Trotsky on the Left, Stalin in the Centre and Bukharin on the Right.

Stalin rather expertly played the factions against each other, using the Right opposition to cower the Left before eventually turning on Bukharin and Rykov. I'm generalising a bit as the machinations of the Soviet Union in the 20's were Byzantine.

But which of these groups had the best chance of stopping Stalins rise to power. Could the Left successfully convince the rest of the party of the danger of Stalins dominance of the bureaucracy or the Right coalesce around Bukharin to counter Stalin. Is there even the possibility of another grouping that spotted the dangers of Stalin in advance?
the left could easily have done it in the early 1920s if they recognized what would have happened, Lenin's testimonies were released to the party elites and Stalin position was actually pretty weak and offered to resign the post of general secretary. The left just underestimated him and thought that they could use him against Trotsky and then the right thought they could use him against the left. IIRC the division between the left and the right were not all that strong in the immediate period after lenin's incapacitate and that was the point of greatest danger for stalin.

If the left had (even just among themselves) recognized stalin as a danger then zinoviev and kamnev could have pushed him out as party secretary. He probably would have retained a politburo seat or something but without being head of the orgburo and the secretariat he wouldn't have being able to build patronage within the party machine and take absolute power.
 
That makes for an interesting scenario if his influence is curtailed but he remains on the Politburo. Does Stalin sit and stew, biding his time and trying to rebuild his influence? Or is he completely neutered and become a footnote in history? It would be ironic if he tries again, fails and gets exiled ala Trotsky.

I wonder who takes the leadership role here? I guess it depends on what faction has the most influence. I know Trotsky is usually the go to answer but I really don't see it, not in the long term. He had far too many enemies.

Would it be rule by committee or perhaps coalesce around a compromise candidate? Zinoviev or Rykov maybe? Or perhaps a mid level functionary as a figurehead for Sovnarkom decisions.
 
the left could easily have done it in the early 1920s if they recognized what would have happened, Lenin's testimonies were released to the party elites and Stalin position was actually pretty weak and offered to resign the post of general secretary. The left just underestimated him and thought that they could use him against Trotsky and then the right thought they could use him against the left. IIRC the division between the left and the right were not all that strong in the immediate period after lenin's incapacitate and that was the point of greatest danger for stalin.

That seems to be it. Somehow these guys always remind of the saying about riding a tiger; at some point in their career, you find some more traditional, more powerful player that deludes themselves into thinking they can exploit the tiger for a ride.
 

RousseauX

Donor
That makes for an interesting scenario if his influence is curtailed but he remains on the Politburo. Does Stalin sit and stew, biding his time and trying to rebuild his influence? Or is he completely neutered and become a footnote in history? It would be ironic if he tries again, fails and gets exiled ala Trotsky.

I wonder who takes the leadership role here? I guess it depends on what faction has the most influence. I know Trotsky is usually the go to answer but I really don't see it, not in the long term. He had far too many enemies.

Would it be rule by committee or perhaps coalesce around a compromise candidate? Zinoviev or Rykov maybe? Or perhaps a mid level functionary as a figurehead for Sovnarkom decisions.
It's up in the air at that point

The original Bolshevik inner circle of the early 1900s were 4 people: Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Sverdlov, if neither Stalin nor Trotsky gains power then all 4 of the inner circle would be either died or out of power

I think yeah, collective leadership might the order of the day for a while

OTOH: stalin wouldn't be out, at this point he would still be the highest ranked surviving Bolshevik from its early days and he still had enormous political skills and enormous patience for the political spadework required to build political patronage within the party. Even if he isn't general secretary and is relegated to a secondary role he is likely to come back as an influential figure, especially since neither the left nor the right were ruthless enough to purge him.
 
IMO Trotsky always had the worst prospects--unless we have a *really* early POD, well before Lenin's strokes. (E.g., avoid the 1920-21 "trade union controversy" with Lenin, which got Trosky's ally Krestinsky removed as the Party's "Responsible Secretary.") If in 1923, Trotsky had pressed the issue of Lenin's "Testament" he *might* have gotten Stalin removed as General Secretary, but even if he did, the likely beneficiaries would be Zinoviev and Kamenev, not himself.

As for the idea of a Trotskyist military coup, I'll quote an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

***


The question has sometimes been raised...whether Trotsky could have used
his positions as commissar of war and chairman of the Military
Revolutionary Council to launch a successful military coup against his
factional opponents during the 1920's. The Zinoviev-Kamenev-Stalin
triumvirate very likely had some fears on this score in the mid-1920's; as
early as January 1924 they removed Trotsky's ally Vladimir Antonov-
Ovseyenko as head of the Political Directorate of the Red Army and
replaced him with Andrei Bubnov. (Bubnov had also been a Trotsky
follower--he had signed the "Declaration of the Forty-Six" though with
some reservations [2]--but had gone over to the triumvirate's side.)
Trotsky was to write in 1935 that a military coup would have been easy--
indeed he makes it sound *incredibly* easy--but that he had rejected it
for principled reasons:
"There is no doubt that it would have been possible to carry out a
military coup d'état against the faction of Zinoviev, Kamenev, Stalin,
etc., *without any difficulty and without even the shedding of any blood*;
but the result of such a coup d'état would have been to accelerate the
rhythm of this very bureaucratization and Bonapartism against which the
Left Opposition had engaged in struggle." [my emphasis--DT]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1935/11/stalin.htm

Likewise, Victor Serge--who retained his admiration of Trotsky even after
breaking with him politically--in his *Memoirs of Revolutionary* (pp.
234-5) wrote that Trotsky could easily have defeated his opponents by
relying on the Red Army:

"...[A] coup against the Politbureau of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and Stalin
would have been possible, and in our Oppositional circles we had weighed
this possibility. The army and even the G.P.U. would have plumped for
Trotsky if he had wished; he was always being told this. I do not know if
there were any formal deliberations on this subject among the leaders of
the Left Opposition, but I do know that the question was discussed (end of
1925, beginning of 1926) and it was then that Trotsky deliberately refused
power, out of respect for an unwritten law that forbade any recourse to
military mutiny within a Socialist regime; for it was all too likely that
power won in this way, even with the noblest intentions, would eventually
finish in a military and police dictatorship, which was anti-Socialist by
definition." http://books.google.com/books?id=zgqahLS2NFwC&pg=PA234

Serge goes on to quote the 1935 Trotsky statement cited above (with a very
slightly different translation), and adds:

"Rarely has it been made more sharply obvious that the end, far from
justifying the means, commands it own means, and that for the
establishment of a Socialist democracy the old means of armed violence are
inappropriate." http://books.google.com/books?id=zgqahLS2NFwC&pg=PA235

Before we accept this portrait of Trotsky--out of principled opposition to
bureaucratization and Bonapartism, nobly sacrificing a chance to come to
power--we should ask whether a military coup would have been that easy, or
indeed even possible. Here I would tend to agree with Roy Medvedev, *Let
History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism* (1989), pp.
133-136:

"... The idea of a military solution to the internal party conflict
occurred to some members of the Trotskyist opposition. Zinoviev, Kamenev,
and Stalin had some apprehensions in this regard, which explains the
changes made on the Revolutionary Military Council as early as 1924 and
the removal of Antonov-Ovseyenko as head of the Political Directorate of
the Red Army and his replacement by Bubnov.

"It must be said quite emphatically, however, that at the time of the
discussion in the party there was never any real threat of a military
coup, if only because the Red Army was never just a 'docile' instrument in
Trotsky's hands. Trotsky could rely fully on the soldiers of the Red Army
when he gave the order to march on Warsaw, but he could not have raised
the Red Army against the Central Committee and the Politburo...

"If Trotsky in 1924 thought as he wrote in 1925, it would have been one
more of his illusions... [A] military ouster of the triumvirate and the
party apparatus loyal to it would have been an extremely difficult and
uncertain undertaking--an adventure with very little chance of success. If
Trotsky refrained from such a step, one can assume that what held him back
was not concern over Bonapartism but uncertainty of his control over the
Red Army.

"The German edition of Serge's memoirs contains a foreword by the
prominent German revolutionary Wollenberg, who went to live in the Soviet
Union after the failure of the German revolution and in the thirties fled
to the West from the persecution of the NKVD and the Gestapo. Wollenberg
convincingly disputes the version of events presented by Serge:

"'What a colossal mistake in assessing the concrete situation that had
arisen in the land of the Soviets within a few months after Lenin's death!
I must add that at the time Lenin died I was still on military duty in
Germany. As a specialist in civil war I held a prominent post in the
German Communist Party. At that time I thought along more or less the
same lines as Serge and as Trotsky apparently thought about all these
matters for another decade or more.

"'But when I moved to Moscow, I saw my error. In Moscow I was forced to
realize that the leading figures on the Red Army general staff, such as
Tukhachevsky, with whom I became friends, admired Trotsky greatly as the
organizer of the Red Army, as a man and a revolutionary, but at the same
time they took a critical attitude toward his general political position.

"'...I had very close contact with the army in general, and, through it,
with the Russian village. There could be no doubt that the top military
command had full confidence in the party leadership.... And in the entire
party there was an unquestionable majority in favor of the triumvirate,
that is, the leading threesome formed after Lenin's death: Zinoviev,
Kamenev, and Stalin. That was the order in which the importance of the
three members was estimated at the time--with Stalin last.

"'If the Soviet constitution could have been changed for a plebiscite to
be held, it is impossible to say which of Lenin's successors would have
gathered the most votes. But it can be said for certain that, given the
hostility of the peasants and the middle class (which was reappearing in
the first half of the 1920s) in relation to Trotsky, who was considered an
'enemy of NEP,' the outcome would have been rather unfavorable for him.

"'It is necessary to state this with full clarity because to this day
Trotskyists of all varieties, as well as Soviet experts in West Germany
and other countries, continue to spread the tale in speech, in print, on
radio and on television that after Lenin's death Trotsky supposedly missed
a 'sure bet.' Apparently Victor Serge believed this too right up to his
death.'"
http://books.google.com/books?id=91fB88t2_zwC&pg=PA133


https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/EAA2ui89o8I/SINb3uPQ9sUJ
***


The best prospects IMO were those of the "Rightists." In 1928, they had three of the nine full members of the Politburo, the editorship of *Pravda* (Bukharin), the head of the Government (Rykov), control of the trade unions (Tomsky), and control of the Moscow Party organization, the most powerful in the country (Uglanov). All it would take would be a couple of waverers to join Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky in 1928 to make a Politburo majority. Kalinin was supposed to have Rightist sympathies, and Voroshilov, despite being Stalin's crony, had to have some concern about the effects of radical anti-peasant measures on a mostly-peasant Red Army.
 

RousseauX

Donor
The best prospects IMO were those of the "Rightists." In 1928, they had three of the nine full members of the Politburo, the editorship of *Pravda* (Bukharin), the head of the Government (Rykov), control of the trade unions (Tomsky), and control of the Moscow Party organization, the most powerful in the country (Uglanov). All it would take would be a couple of waverers to join Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky in 1928 to make a Politburo majority. Kalinin was supposed to have Rightist sympathies, and Voroshilov, despite being Stalin's crony, had to have some concern about the effects of radical anti-peasant measures on a mostly-peasant Red Army.
the politburo by 1928 imo doesn't really show who holds the power in the party anymore because the central committee and the party congresses are packed with stalinists, which in effect meant the politburo compositions is what stalin wants it to be

if the right calls for his removal in the politburo then stalin just pulls the same thing Khrushchev pulled in 1954 and refer it to be the central committee, which too packed with his cronies to vote him out
 
the politburo by 1928 imo doesn't really show who holds the power in the party anymore because the central committee and the party congresses are packed with stalinists, which in effect meant the politburo compositions is what stalin wants it to be

if the right calls for his removal in the politburo then stalin just pulls the same thing Khrushchev pulled in 1954 and refer it to be the central committee, which too packed with his cronies to vote him out

Presumably you mean 1957. But a lot of people who were in the Central Committee in 1928 had been appointed when Stalin and Bukharin were allies. I am not sure they would side with Stalin against a pro-Bukharin Politburo.

Even in 1957, the Anti-Party Group was not necessarily wrong to believe that once they got a majority on the Politburo (or Presidium as it was then known) the Central Committee would accept their power grab as a *fait acompli.* What doomed the Group and made the Central Committee's decision pretty much inevitable was that the Army (Zhukov) and the Security Police (Serov) took Khrushchev's side. This would not necessarily be the case in the late 1920's. Yagoda, who was the effective head of the OGPU at the time (Menzhinsky was too ill to be anything more than nominal head) is supposed to have had rightist sympathies. As for the armed forces, maybe the Rightists' hopes to detach Voroshilov from Stalin were a pipe dream, but unless such detachment took place, the Rightists couldn't get a majority in the Poltburo in the first place. In any event, Sheila Fitzpatrick writes in *On Stalin's Team* that in the mid-1920's "Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky, *and often Voroshilov* [my emphasis--DT]" showed moderate or "pro-peasant" tendencies. https://books.google.com/books?id=HAIACQAAQBAJ&pg=PA32
 
Is it imprudent to interject the rumor or fact of Stalin being an Okhrana operative? Even if mere rumor could his enemies resurrect the charge to undermine or remove Stalin from power? And if true would this destroy him or did this explain his true reach? Could a foreign power (either Germany or the USA I presume) have used this to tip the balance in favor of his opposition or successor?
 
The only large attempt to depose Stalin (in 1934) was lead by Kirov.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Kirov

IMO this is a myth. The best work on Kirov is Matthew Lenoe's *The Kirov Murder and Soviet History* (the basic thesis of which is that Nikolaev probably acted alone in killing Kirov). Two points Lenoe makes;

(1) One should not exaggerate Kirov's stature in 1934. "Not only did the early publications of the memorial campaign turn Kirov into a plaster saint, they also exaggerated his stature in the party leadership. Perusal of *Pravda* and even Leningrad's hometown *Leningradkaya pravda* from 1934 suggests that Kirov's public profile before his death was substantially lower than that of Kaganovich, Molotov, or Ordzhonikidze. Coverage of the Leningrad leader was comparable to that of Pavel Postyshev and other second-level party officials. The overstatement of Kirov's power and prestige during the memorial campaign contributed to later assertions that he was a serious rival to Stalin." *The Kirov Murder and Soviet History,* pp. 494-495.

(2) Lenoe also argues that it is not true that Kirov got more votes than Stalin for re-election to the Central Committee at the Seventeenth Party Congress: "I. F. Kodatsky, from Leningrad, and Mikhail Kalinin were the only two TsK members elected unanimously. Stalin received three votes against, and Kirov four." p. 757. There were allegations in 1960-61 that there had really been two or three hundred votes against Stalin, but Lenoe dismisses them as implausible and designed to fit Khrushchev's narrative of the time--that many "honest Leninists" had tried to stand up to Stalin, but were thwarted by Stalin, Molotov, and Kaganovich--the last named was very conveniently accused of altering the voting results. pp. 613-614.)

Of course that there were any votes at all against any of the leaders--especially Stalin--was suppressed, and in later memory that may have been inflated (or deliberately exaggerated) into suppression of a huge number of anti-Stalin votes.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
The best prospects IMO were those of the "Rightists." In 1928, they had three of the nine full members of the Politburo, the editorship of *Pravda* (Bukharin), the head of the Government (Rykov), control of the trade unions (Tomsky), and control of the Moscow Party organization, the most powerful in the country (Uglanov). All it would take would be a couple of waverers to join Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky in 1928 to make a Politburo majority. Kalinin was supposed to have Rightist sympathies, and Voroshilov, despite being Stalin's crony, had to have some concern about the effects of radical anti-peasant measures on a mostly-peasant Red Army.
So, if the Rightists win control of the Politburo in 1928, how would they have governed the Soviet Union? I'm presuming that the NEP stays in place and there would be (much?) less terror and purges, but what else would there be?

Also, who would have won a power struggle between Zinoviev and Kamenev had Stalin been removed from his post in 1923?
 

Wallet

Banned
I know this takes the discussion a few decades later but...

The biggest fear Stalin ever had was Zhukov. At the end of WWII Zhukov was more popular then Stalin and was the only figure the army would have united around against Stalin. During the war he was the only one who dared voice his opinion to Stalin and even got into an argument about leaving Kiev.

Stalin knew this and just a year after the German surrender be demoted Zhukov and sent him to a useless post in the Urals. In 1948 his Moscow apartment was searched and all his possessions seized.

Zhukov did arrest Beria after Stalin died and remained respected. His support of Khrushchev is what got Khrushchev in power. He was also great friends with Eisenhower. (Zhukov was a huge fan of coke but it was banned in the Soviet Union. Eisenhower had the company produce a ton of it specially colored white so it appeared to be vodka and smuggled so Zhukov had a lifetime supply)

If you want Stalin gone, Zhukov is the way to go
 
I know this takes the discussion a few decades later but...

The biggest fear Stalin ever had was Zhukov. At the end of WWII Zhukov was more popular then Stalin and was the only figure the army would have united around against Stalin. During the war he was the only one who dared voice his opinion to Stalin and even got into an argument about leaving Kiev.

Stalin knew this and just a year after the German surrender be demoted Zhukov and sent him to a useless post in the Urals. In 1948 his Moscow apartment was searched and all his possessions seized.

Zhukov did arrest Beria after Stalin died and remained respected. His support of Khrushchev is what got Khrushchev in power. He was also great friends with Eisenhower. (Zhukov was a huge fan of coke but it was banned in the Soviet Union. Eisenhower had the company produce a ton of it specially colored white so it appeared to be vodka and smuggled so Zhukov had a lifetime supply)

If you want Stalin gone, Zhukov is the way to go

As I have often pointed out, e.g., at https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/soviet-military-coup-1945.405159/#post-13780009 and https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...l-secretary-of-the-ussr.359211/#post-10987931 there has never been any real evidence that Zhukov was plotting a coup at *any* time. And a coup was the only way he could come to power; the party leaders, with their fear of "Bonapartism" are certainly not going to make him General Secretary on their own. Khrushchev used him to help arrest Beria and later to defeat the so-called Anti-Party Group--and then got rid of him when he was no longer needed.
 
The best prospects IMO were those of the "Rightists." In 1928, they had three of the nine full members of the Politburo, the editorship of *Pravda* (Bukharin), the head of the Government (Rykov), control of the trade unions (Tomsky), and control of the Moscow Party organization, the most powerful in the country (Uglanov). All it would take would be a couple of waverers to join Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky in 1928 to make a Politburo majority. Kalinin was supposed to have Rightist sympathies, and Voroshilov, despite being Stalin's crony, had to have some concern about the effects of radical anti-peasant measures on a mostly-peasant Red Army.

Incidentally, the Rightists might have had a better chance if Dzerzhinsky had lived. As Stephen F. Cohen writes in *Bukharin and the Bolshevik Revolution,* pp. 243-4:

"The Supreme Economic Council was of special importance in this connection as the center of right-wing industrial strategy in 1924-6. As nominal manager of the state sector, the Council's main responsibility was for heavy industry, its growth and planning. With Rykov's appointment to the premiership in February 1924, Felix Dzerihinskii, chief of the seem police, became its chairman. Confuting the fears of the specialists, he turned out to be their reliable friend and, most important, a passionate advocate of Bukharinist economic policies. An ardent believer in the *smychka* [worker-peasant alliance--DT] , his faith in the efficacy of basing heavy industry growth on the peasant market and accumulation within the state sector through lowering costs and prices and increasing turnover was even more single-minded than Bukharin's. He shared the essential article of Bukharinism: 'It is not possible to industrialize ourselves if we speak with fear about the prosperity of the village.'

"A strong chairman of the Council, candidate Politburo member, and still head of the police, Dzerzhinskii gave the Right an organizational toughness many of its other representatives lacked. In some ways the majority's angriest and most effective voice in the debates with industrializers of the Left, he died on July 20, 1926, hours after a bitter exchange with the opposition. Whether Dzerzhinskii would have stood with Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomskii against Stalin in 1928 can only be guessed. But his death soon deprived them of a key stronghold. His successor was Valerian Kuibyshev, a supporter of Stalin and zealous believer in large investment projects and rapid industrialization. Within weeks, the philosophy and personnel of the Supreme Economic Council began to undergo a far-reaching transformation..." https://books.google.com/books?id=BUg-lWpZcsIC&pg=PA233
 
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