as enemies of the state. The secret police – NKVD, were given unlimited power and served Stalin in total obedience. By 1930 Christian tells us, Stalin was already undisputed “boss” of Party and government. The greatest change came in 1934. According to Robert Conquest, writer of the definitive work on the period, The Great Terror – A Reassessment, before 1934 there was still some underground opposition to Stalin (eg. Mikhail Ryutin) and the Politburo as the highest organ of both Party and state could still overrule him. In 1934 with the shooting of Leningrad Party chief Sergei Kirov, Stalin launched an unprecedented campaign of terror to purge the party of all opposition. In the next 5 years under Stalin’s orders, the NKVD arrested and executed thousands of party officials. Kamenev and Zinoviev were show trialled and executed. In 1937 Stalin moved into a position of complete dictatorship with the subjection of the Politburo to a special commission of which he was head and on which sat only the most loyal and fully obedient lackeys – namely Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Yezhov. From this point until his death, Stalin’s power was absolute. As Maclean describes:“It was greater power than that exercised by Lenin or by any of his Imperial predecessors, power unquestioned and absolute, power ruthlessly used, power that reached out into the remote valleys of the Caucasus and Pamirs and across the frozen Siberian tundra, power supported by an active and ubiquitous secret police. ‘Imagine Jenghiz Khan with a telephone’ Tolstoi had said towards the end of his life. His prophecy had more than been fulfilled”. On the political level Stalin certainly became far more powerful than Lenin was. Lenin was never an absolute dictator and mostly operated as leader of the Party but still within it. With him the dictatorship was of the party and not in spite of it. Stalin simply le...
