Compared with the preening Trotsky, Stalin could appear as the revolution’s hardworking, underappreciated foot soldier. Compared with Trotsky’s popularity among Russia’s small cosmopolitan intelligentsia, as the master of multiple European languages and author of fluent works about culture as well as politics, Stalin could be the representative of the far vaster middling sort, whose aspirations he captured like a tuning fork.13 Stalin walked into a golden opportunity to become the orthodox Leninist as well as a household name by battling, and besting, the world-renowned Trotsky.
