Stalin liked to represent himself as the heir of Lenin, the man predestined to carry on the Bolshevik revolution. This claim is not borne out, however, by a “testament” prepared by Lenin shortly before his death. “Comrade Stalin,” wrote Lenin, on Christmas Day, 1922, “having become General Secretary, has concentrated an enormous power in his hands; and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution.” Then Lenin added a postscript dated January 4, 1923, a full year before he died: Stalin is too rude, and this fault, entirely supportable in relations among us Communists, becomes insupportable in the office of General Secretary. Therefore, I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position.... However, the time for action had passed. Lenin was too sick to implement his testament. The result: a terrific struggle between Stalin and Trotsky for power. Trotsky (real name Bronstein) was born in 1879 (two months earlier than Stalin). Early a revolutionary, he spent many years as an exile from Russia. After the Bolshevik revolution he served as Lenin’s Commissar of Foreign Affairs and later did much to organize the Red army. Many differences separated Stalin and Trotsky, the chief one being Stalin’s idea that Russia should concentrate on making itself powerful _first_, before undertaking extensive revolutionary action abroad. Trotsky, on the other hand, believed that the Russian revolution could survive only if communist revolutions were promoted in other countries. Both desired world conquest. Their dispute, clouded by a personal hunger for power, centered on how to achieve it. Stalin was the winner. Trotsky was exiled by Stalin in 1929, eventually finding refuge in Mexico. He was assassinated in 1940, reportedly by a secret communist agent. Joseph Stalin was the fourth “top leader” of communism, claiming “divine” ancestry from Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Until his death in 1953, Stalin played a major role in the history of Russian and world communism, as a “continuer” of the work of Lenin. It was Stalin who, through murder, deceit, and brutality, gave communism _power_, firmly establishing Bolshevik control in Russia and spreading communism to other countries. However, he also was to become the first of the “Big Four” to be denounced by the communists and to have his name blackened by successors.