Josh Ireland

He's been sick, he's had strokes, there's been a failed assassination attempt which has left him incredibly weak.

So what Trotsky and all the Bolsheviks know is that Lenin's time on this planet is numbered, that at some point there's going to be a succession struggle.

And this is where the rivalry that already exists between Trotsky and Stalin begins to become sharpened and fierce because they know that both of them

are prime candidates to... Well, Trotsky certainly sees himself as a prime candidate and most of the world would agree with him.

Assume that he was the heir apparent.

So what Trotsky will do later is he will present a vision of Stalin as what he describes him as a grey blur, as a kind of mediocrity, a bureaucratic mediocrity who somehow accidentally became powerful, who sort of stumbled into the top job in the Soviet Union.

Which is half true in so much as Stalin wasn't as charismatic as... A little bit Vladimir Putin-y, weirdly.

Yeah, I mean, there are similarities.

I mean, both have a kind of weird, obsessive interest in Russian history and a kind of...

So I think Stalin and Trotsky have very different personalities.

They have a kind of physical loathing for each other.

Whereas Trotsky is a kind of cosmopolitan who's lived in Vienna, who knows about psychoanalysis, who writes literary criticism, who has an interest in science and things like that.

Stalin is...

is a big reader but and is by most definition an intellectual but he doesn't speak much he kind of he's this sort of strange short figure with limp and pockmarked cheeks you know Trotsky would sort of denigrate him as a coarse provincial character

He doesn't talk when he doesn't need to talk, but he's always planning.

He's always thinking.

And this is kind of where their understanding of what power is in the 20th century is significant.

Because for Trotsky, it's being able to deliver a sort of sparkling speech, inspire people.

And then that's how you get people to follow you.

Whereas what Stalin understands is that, you know, actually you acquire power by forming alliances, by building