Rise of Joseph Stalin - General Secretary and Invasion of Georgia

General Secretary and Invasion of Georgia

In late 1920, Trotsky argued for a ban on trade unions and a formal imposition of Party dictatorship over the industrial sectors. Fearing a backlash from the unions, Lenin asked Stalin to build a support base for him against Trotsky. Lenin's faction eventually prevailed at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921. Frustrated by the squabbling factions within the Party during what he saw as a time of crisis, Lenin convinced the Tenth Congress to pass a ban on any opposition to official Central Committee policy (the Ban on Factions, a law which Stalin would later exploit to expel his enemies). Lenin still, however, encountered difficulties pushing his policies through and decided to give his reliable ally, Stalin, more power. With the help of Kamenev, Lenin successfully had Stalin appointed to the post of General Secretary on April 3, 1922. Stalin still held his posts in the Orgburo, the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate and the Commassariat for Nationalities Affairs, though he agreed to delegate his workload to subordinates. With this power, he would steadily place his supporters in positions of authority.

Stalin played a decisive role in engineering the 1921 Red Army invasion of Georgia following which he adopted particularly hardline, centralist policies towards Soviet Georgia, which included severe repression of all opposition within the local Communist party (e.g., the Georgian Affair of 1922), not to mention any manifestations of anti-Sovietism (the August Uprising of 1924). It was in the Georgian affairs that Stalin first began to play his own hand. Lenin, however, disliked Stalin's policy towards Georgia, as he believed all the Soviet states should be on equal standing with Russia rather than be absorbed and subordinated to it.