Stalin Expelled Trotsky From the Communist Party
In late 1927 Stalin engineered the ouster of Leon Trotsky, the Bolshevik who had built the Red Army, clearing his last serious rival.
When Lenin died in 1924, two visions of the Soviet future collided. Leon Trotsky, who had organised the October seizure of power and forged the Red Army, championed “permanent revolution” and warned against a swelling party bureaucracy. Joseph Stalin, controlling the party machine as General Secretary, pushed “socialism in one country” and steadily out-manoeuvred his rivals.
Through 1926 and 1927 Trotsky joined with Zinoviev and Kamenev in a United Opposition. After their supporters staged rival demonstrations during the tenth-anniversary celebrations of the revolution, the leadership struck back. In November 1927 an extraordinary session of the Central Committee and Central Control Commission expelled Trotsky and Zinoviev from the party for inciting the protests; the Fifteenth Party Congress that December confirmed the purge of the Opposition.
Expulsion left Stalin without a serious rival at the summit of Soviet power.
Trotsky was banished to Alma-Ata in 1928 and deported from the Soviet Union in 1929. He was assassinated in Mexico in 1940.
Sources & references
3 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 3 independent sources.
