polar opposite of the demagogue," the latter being political phoniness and empty promises (Trotsky). Being identified with Lenin seemingly whitewashed Stalin's base motivations and made him appear noble and guiltless to the masses.
Stalin's rise to power was not effortless, by any means, however. Not only did it require a vast amount of Machiavellian manipulation, but it also required him to do something about the men in his way, such as Trotsky and Kirov. Stalin's modus operandi was vilification. In the Moscow trials that were "travesties of justice," Trotsky was falsely excoriated as "the evil spirit of Communism" and arrested on trumped-up charges; as Adam Bruno Ulam (xix) points out, to lift the false charges off Trotsky would unveil the entire corrupt political machinery that had been falsely accusing and executing political prisoners for years. Ulam (119) also notes that Lenin befriended Trotsky and Bukharin, "his future collaborators and victims," only to turn on them later. Lenin had a way of using people that might advance his political agenda and then doing a sudden about-face and accusing them of some malfeasance. This is what happened to Trotsky, who, according to M.V. Roslyakov, was suddenly targeted by Lenin, who let it be known among his followers that "it was high time to finish off Trotsky" (Ulam xxii). Bukharin, too, was sent to his death in the Moscow trials (Ulam xix). Sergei Kirov was a Soviet representative in Tiflis who served as another rung on Lenin's ladder to "full despotism" (Ulam 194). After serving Lenin's purposes, however, and showing unexpected resistance to Lenin's agenda in executing Riutin, Kirov was mysteriously assassinated by a terrorist gunman in his own office at the Smolny Institute (Brackman 204-205).
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