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On his front, Stalin became determined to conquer Lvov; in focusing on this goal, he disobeyed orders to transfer his troops to assist Mikhail Tukhachevsky's forces at the Battle of Warsaw in early August, which ended in a major defeat for the Red Army. [161] Stalin then returned to Moscow, [162] where Tukhachevsky blamed him for the loss. [163]
Stalin was one of the Bolsheviks' chief operatives in the Caucasus and grew closer to Lenin, who saw him as tough, loyal, and capable of getting things done behind the scenes. Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia. His successes in Georgia propelled him into the ranks of the Politburo in late 1921.
Stalin continued to increase his influence in the party, and by the end of the 1920s, he became the sole dictator of the USSR, defeating all his political opponents. The post of general secretary of the party, which was held by Stalin, became the most important post in the Soviet hierarchy.
Lenin had appointed Stalin the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, which gave Stalin considerable power. [44] By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and outmaneuvering his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the country and, by the end of the 1920s, established a totalitarian rule.
During this period, the practice of mass arrest, torture, and imprisonment or execution without trial, of anyone suspected by the secret police of opposing Stalin's regime became commonplace. By the NKVD's own count, 681,692 people were shot during 1937–1938 alone, and hundreds of thousands of political prisoners were transported to Gulag ...
After Lenin's death, Stalin began to consolidate his power by using the office of General Secretary. By 1928, he had unquestionably become the de facto leader of the USSR, while the position of General Secretary became the highest office in the nation. In 1934, the 17th Party Congress refrained from formally re-electing Stalin as General ...
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Retrospectively, Lenin's primary associates such as Zinoviev, Trotsky, Radek and Bukharin were presented as "vacillating", "opportunists" and "foreign spies" whereas Stalin was depicted as the chief discipline during the revolution. However, in reality, Stalin was considered a relatively unknown figure with secondary importance at the time of ...