A summary of each theory in turn:
The heroic approach:
Ward:
P.19:
The part played by Stalin’s personality has been argued on both sides – hagiographers one side of what Trotsky called the Stalin’s school of falsification point to his wisdom and foresight in defending socialism from Trotskyists and bukharinist and on the other hand, Conquest & Tucker highlight Stalin’s duplicity and ruthlessness, claiming that he deceived allies and opponents alike into believing that he took their ideas seriously when in reality, he was manipulating situations for his own purposes
P.20
There are many rhetorical devices designed to mask Stalin’s ambition to become dictator
There is a broad consensus into the failings into the other main actors
“Edward Carr dismisses Zinoviev as little more than an unsavoury careerist”
“Kamenev as bereft of any cohort goal and in need of a strong leader”
No one was a match for Stalin
Lenin stricken in mind and body and scarcely able to work realised to late the true nature of his quote ‘wonderful Georgian’
Many acknowledge that Trotsky underestimated Stalin
The administrative approach
Ward:
P.21
Stalin’s accumulation of offices within the party-state machine has been long a focus of historical inquiry
Carr nearly abbreviates the labours of an entire generation of scholars concerned with state-building and the evolution of Bolshevism’s administrative apparatus
Carr concludes that Stalin’s victory ‘was a triumph not of reason, but of organisation’
Narkomnats endowed Stalin with power and influence over the remote corners of nascent socialist republic, allowing, by the end of 1922 the construction of the USSR
Stalin was in a position whereby he could promote friends and demote enemies under the guise of administrative necessity. Inexorably the SU was made in Stalin’s own image
Administration began to displace politics – The Politburo might take decisions but it was the Orgburo and the Secretariat which managed things on a...