Footnote: Trotsky himself at first admitted that Lenin had left no Testament or Will. In a letter to the New York Daily Worker on August 8, 1925, Trotsky wrote: “As for the “will’, Lenin never left one, and the very nature of his relations with the Party as well as the nature of the Party itself made such a “will’ absolutely impossible.
“In the guise of a “will’ the emigre and foreign bourgeois and Menshevik press have all along been quoting one of Lenin’s letters (completely mutilated) which contains a number of advices on questions of organization.
“All talk about a secreted or infringed “will’ is so much mischievous invention directed against the real will of Lenin and of the interests of the Party created by him.”
Sayers and Kahn. The Great Conspiracy. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946, p. 200
…[at the October 1927 combined meeting of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission] he [Stalin] exploited the fact that, at the Politburo’s (and above all his own) insistence, Bolshevik of September 1925 had published a statement by Trotsky concerning the Testament. Giving into pressure from Stalin on that occasion, Trotsky had written:
“Since becoming ill, Vladimir Ilyich had frequently written proposals, letters, etc. to the party’s leading bodies and its congresses. All these letters etc. were naturally always delivered to their intended destinations, and were brought to the attention of the delegates to the 12th and 13th Congresses and always, naturally, had the appropriate influence on party decisions…. Vladimir Ilyich left no testament, and the very nature of his relations with the party, as well as the nature of the party itself, exclude the possibility of any such testament, so that any talk about concealing or not carrying out a testament is a malicious invention and is aimed in fact entirely against Vladimir Ilyich’s intention.”
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 138
It was only after they have been beaten, in the spring 1926, that Zinoviev and Kamenev at last threw in their lot with Trotsky. Meanwhile, Trotsky, too, had further weakened his position by renouncing his supporters abroad, who had published Lenin’s testament. He even went so far– and all in the name of discipline–as to describe the document as apocryphal. The union of the two oppositions represented therefore little more than the joint wreckage of their former separate selves.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 307
WHAT DOES THE TESTAMENT SAY
In the last few weeks of 1922, Lenin completed the letter to the party which is now generally known as the “Testament of Lenin.” The name conveys a wrong impression, it was in no sense a Will, for Lenin never regarded his position as something to be bequeathed to another, he knew that he occupied the President’s chair because of his abilities alone; it was his dearest wish that his successor should do likewise.
How wrong he was, how tragically optimistic, can be clearly seen from the fate of the Testament itself. The party leaders, each one of whom knew its contents, first decided not to publish it while its author was alive and later postponed publication indefinitely. Trotsky, who was later to make much of the “Testament,” concurred in this decision which was broken finally by accident. A copy had been received by a visitor to the USSR, the American left-wing journalist, Max Eastman, who promptly gave it worldwide publicity in the Press of the United States. Sad reflection that the last words of so great a leader should reach the Russian people from a back-stage newspapers scoop in New York.
In the testament, Lenin gave a brief characterization of the leading figures of the Party. Trotsky, brilliant but too diverse in his interests; Zinoviev and Kamenev, indecisive and untrustworthy in a crisis; Bukharin, clever but not a confirmed Marxist; Stalin also received his share of criticism as being “too rude” to fill the office of General Secretary to everybody’s satisfaction. In spite of this, Lenin’s rebuke to Stalin is the least severe of all; the faults of the others lay in fundamental weaknesses, Stalin was simply too brusque to smooth over the trivial personal frictions of his subordinates.
Stalin himself as always regarded Lenin’s reference to him as more of a compliment than otherwise. In an address to a later congress he repeated the words, adding: “Yes, comrades, I am rude to those who seek to weaken the Party by their activities and I shall continue to be rude to such people.”
Cole, David M. Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 60
Speaking of Lenin's Testament, why not word-search this page for "testament" and have fun learning about it a few choice sections such as
TROTSKY DENIES THERE IS A TESTAMENT
Sayers and Kahn. The Great Conspiracy. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1946, p. 200
Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 138
It was only after they have been beaten, in the spring 1926, that Zinoviev and Kamenev at last threw in their lot with Trotsky. Meanwhile, Trotsky, too, had further weakened his position by renouncing his supporters abroad, who had published Lenin’s testament. He even went so far– and all in the name of discipline–as to describe the document as apocryphal. The union of the two oppositions represented therefore little more than the joint wreckage of their former separate selves.
Deutscher, Isaac. Stalin; A Political Biography. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967, p. 307
WHAT DOES THE TESTAMENT SAY
In the last few weeks of 1922, Lenin completed the letter to the party which is now generally known as the “Testament of Lenin.” The name conveys a wrong impression, it was in no sense a Will, for Lenin never regarded his position as something to be bequeathed to another, he knew that he occupied the President’s chair because of his abilities alone; it was his dearest wish that his successor should do likewise.
How wrong he was, how tragically optimistic, can be clearly seen from the fate of the Testament itself. The party leaders, each one of whom knew its contents, first decided not to publish it while its author was alive and later postponed publication indefinitely. Trotsky, who was later to make much of the “Testament,” concurred in this decision which was broken finally by accident. A copy had been received by a visitor to the USSR, the American left-wing journalist, Max Eastman, who promptly gave it worldwide publicity in the Press of the United States. Sad reflection that the last words of so great a leader should reach the Russian people from a back-stage newspapers scoop in New York.
In the testament, Lenin gave a brief characterization of the leading figures of the Party. Trotsky, brilliant but too diverse in his interests; Zinoviev and Kamenev, indecisive and untrustworthy in a crisis; Bukharin, clever but not a confirmed Marxist; Stalin also received his share of criticism as being “too rude” to fill the office of General Secretary to everybody’s satisfaction. In spite of this, Lenin’s rebuke to Stalin is the least severe of all; the faults of the others lay in fundamental weaknesses, Stalin was simply too brusque to smooth over the trivial personal frictions of his subordinates. Stalin himself as always regarded Lenin’s reference to him as more of a compliment than otherwise. In an address to a later congress he repeated the words, adding: “Yes, comrades, I am rude to those who seek to weaken the Party by their activities and I shall continue to be rude to such people.”
Cole, David M. Josef Stalin; Man of Steel. London, New York: Rich & Cowan, 1942, p. 60
Hmm, funny, that.