Of course, to do all that, Trotsky needed to perceive Lenin’s death as a strategic opportunity, and he needed a persuasive story line about how the grand socialist dream could be revived, why all those harsh exchanges he had had with Lenin were incidental, and why he (Trotsky) was uniquely qualified to carry forward the sacred Leninist cause. A tall order, to put it mildly. But who could doubt that if Lenin had found that others were conspiring against him, he would have mounted a coup against his own party?
