Trotsky proved to be less the obstacle to than the instrument of Stalin’s aggrandizement. Just as the Bolshevik regime needed the civil war to form a state, so Stalin needed “opposition” to consolidate his personal dictatorship—and he found it. Compared with Trotsky’s delight in polemicizing against this or that regime policy, which lent itself to accusations of schism and factionalism, Stalin presented himself as the faithful defender of the Central Committee and Lenin’s legacy.
