Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928

Seizure of Power: Second Congress of Soviets, banners proclaiming “All Power to the Soviets,” Tauride Palace, Petrograd, second night of the coup, October 26, 1917. Photographed by Pavel Otsup. “When I entered the hall,” wrote the chronicler Nikolai Sukhanov, “there was a bald, clean-shaven man I didn’t know standing on the podium and talking excitedly in a rather hoarse, stentorian voice, somewhat guttural and with a spectacular emphasis at the end of his phrases. Ha! It was Lenin.”

Julius Tsederbaum, known as Martov, who had led the Mensheviks out of the congress hall on the first day, in protest of the Bolshevik coup. He would attack Stalin in 1918, and serve as the source of ill will between Stalin and Lenin.