Lev Kamenev - Opposition Against Trotsky

Opposition Against Trotsky

In 1918, Kamenev became chairman of the Moscow Soviet and soon thereafter Lenin's Deputy Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars (government) and the Council of Labor and Defense. In March, 1919, Kamenev was elected a full member of the first Politburo. His personal relationship with his brother-in-law Trotsky, which was good in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution and during the Russian Civil War, soured after 1920 and for the next 15 years he was a friend and close ally of Grigory Zinoviev, a more ambitious man than Kamenev.

During Lenin's illness, Kamenev was the acting Council of People's Commissars and Politburo chairman. Together with Zinoviev and Joseph Stalin, he formed a ruling 'triumvirate' (or 'troika') in the Communist Party, and played a key role in the marginalization of Trotsky. The triumvirate carefully managed the intra-party debate and delegate selection process in the fall of 1923 during the runup to the XIIIth Party Conference and secured a vast majority of the seats. The Conference, held in January 1924 immediately prior to Lenin's death, denounced Trotsky and "Trotskyism".

After Trotsky's defeat at the XIIIth Conference, tensions between Zinoviev and Kamenev on the one hand and Stalin on the other hand became more pronounced and threatened to end their fragile alliance. Nevertheless, Zinoviev and especially Kamenev helped Stalin retain his position as General Secretary of the Central Committee at the XIIIth Party Congress in May–June 1924 during the first Lenin's Testament controversy. After the Congress, Stalin began making veiled public remarks apparently aimed at Kamenev and Zinoviev, which all but destroyed the troika.

However, in October 1924, Trotsky published The Lessons of October, an extensive summary of the events of 1917. In the article, Trotsky described Zinoviev and Kamenev's opposition to the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917, something that the two would have preferred left unmentioned. This started a new round of intra-party struggle with Zinoviev and Kamenev once again allied with Stalin against Trotsky. They and their supporters accused Trotsky of various mistakes and worse during the Russian Civil War and damaged his military reputation so much that he was forced to resign as People's Commissar of Army and Fleet Affairs and Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council in January 1925. Zinoviev demanded Trotsky's expulsion from the Communist Party, but Stalin refused to go along and skillfully played the role of a moderate.