ry General by stating, "…Stalin is too rude and this defect… becomes intolerable in a Secretary General." (Clark 474). Lenin continued on to state that "…the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man…" (Clark 474). Lenin felt that if the removal of Stalin was not acted upon, the conflict between Trotsky and Stalin would escalate, which would in turn endanger the party as a whole. Combined with the Testament, the Postscript could have served as a tool for Trotsky to obtain power, instead Stalin squashed it in the Central Committee. Another possible advantage left unused by Trotsky was Lenin's disagreement with Stalin on how to handle the Georgian Affair. During the war with Poland, the Soviet republic signed a treaty with the Menshevik government of Georgia, "…which solemnly undertook to respect Georgian independence." (Segal 240). Lenin wanted to maintain that Georgia remained a "…sovereign and independent unit which would have joined the Russian federative state." (Clark 477). As Commissar of Nationalities, Stalin ordered the suppression of the Menshevik party in Georgia. In order to achieve his goal, Stalin was preparing a constitution which was "…to be much more centralistic… and would curtail and abrogate the rights of the non-Russian nationalities…" Also in this new constitution, Stalin was going to change "…Soviet Federation of republics into the Soviet Union." (Pro 51) Through a series of notes, after the postscript, Lenin, with a guilty conscience, admitted that he had not sufficiently stopped the new oppression of the weak by the strong and viewed the centralistic nature of Stalin's scheme as being "borrowed from Tsardom and only just covered with a Soviet veneer…" (Pro 71). He proceeded to dictate notes on the Georgian Affair, which were scathing criticisms of Stalin's conduct. He described Stalin as a "truly Russian...
