ON THIS DAY ·
Trotsky’s exile to Alma-Ata
17 Jan 1928 — OGPU agents carried Leon Trotsky, the founder of the Red Army, onto a train and sent him to Alma-Ata, more than 3,000 km from Moscow. Distance did not silence him: from Kazakhstan he continued to write to his supporters. The regime eventually decided that even this exile was too close.
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The moment in context
Lenin had tried to warn his colleagues about Stalin. After strokes left him partly paralyzed, he dictated notes in December 1922 and January 1923 that became known as his Testament. He said Stalin had accumulated “unlimited authority” and, in a postscript dated 4 January 1923, called him “too rude” and proposed removing him as General Secretary. The dispute behind this warning was the Georgian Affair, marked at Tiflis: Stalin and his ally Sergo Ordzhonikidze had bullied Georgian communists into a federation with Armenia and Azerbaijan.
From Stalin’s rise to power, chapter 1 of The Soviet Union under Stalin, 1924–1953 (1928).
The place: Trotsky’s exile to Alma-Ata — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — The party had no rules for succession. Lenin’s personal authority held together a leadership with no office of party leader and no settled succession procedure. The Politburo made policy,…
- The turn — Alma-Ata, January 1928. On 17 January 1928 Trotsky was sent to Alma-Ata, 3,000 kilometres from Moscow, after expulsion from the party. The journey removed the last leader…
- What it changed — A leader without rivals launched the Great Turn. Victory in 1927–29 left Stalin able to impose forced collectivization and rapid industrialization without an opposing faction to stop him. His…
Then ask the room: Did Stalin win the succession mainly through his own skill, or because his rivals made it easy for him? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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