Josh Ireland

And then there's a kind of myth about this.

For a long time, I think there was a belief that Stalin deliberately told Trotsky the incorrect date for Lenin's funeral so that Trotsky would be too late to arrive.

But it seems now that Trotsky actually did know what the right date of the funeral was, but just didn't think it was important to attend.

Okay.

And this was kind of significant mostly because one of the kind of key plank in Stalin's strategy was to identify himself incredibly closely with Lenin and Lenin's legacy.

Yeah, it's like Mark Antony.

Go out and give the big speech after Caesar's gone, man.

So you present yourself as the guardian of Lenin's legacy.

The person that is loved or at least respected across the empire, you set what was the empire.

You present yourself as being the only person that could protect his legacy.

And by contrast, you'd say that Trotsky, he's a strange person who spent too much time in Europe.

He has strange ideas.

He doesn't turn up to the funeral.

He wants to change things.

But I'm going to keep things the same.

Don't trust him.

Well, look at Churchill in the Second World War.

This sort of small, on the face of it, frail figure, but who works phenomenal hours and doesn't ever stop.

I mean, I wouldn't have lasted until sort of June 1940.

Yeah, so I think... I remember when I was at school, it was sort of presented as a contest between Stalin and Trotsky that somehow Stalin won.