'By the mid-1920's, Stalin's main opponents would come to realize that this 'outstanding mediocrity' was an exceptional politician, cunning, crafty and wilful. Soon, any party and state leaders who had anything to do with him would also realize it. In examining this period of history, one inevitably feels that the great issues surrounding the historic choice were frequently put into second place by the personal ambitions of the leaders, and the struggle how to build a socialism was severely affected by personal rivalry. The chief contenders were Stalin, Trotsky and Zinoviev. Behind their contest lay concrete issues of politics and economics, attitudes to the peasantry, the way to industrialize, the theory and practise of the international Communist movement. On occasion, the differences over these issues were infact of secondary importance and agreement could have been based on their common denominator. But personal ambition, rivalry and militant irreconcilability, particularly between Stalin and Trotsky, gave the struggle a dramatic quality which meant that any ideas that differed from his own were regarded by Stalin solely as class-hostile, capitulationist, revisionit, traitorous, and so on.'

D. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and tragedy, (Transl. H. Shukman) Forum 1996, p. 108.

Instructions for the Paper 1 practise