Lenin's Testament

Lenin's Testament is the name given to a document written by Vladimir Lenin in the last weeks of 1922 and the first week of 1923. In the testament, Lenin proposed changes to the structure of the Soviet governing bodies. Sensing his impending death, he also commented on the leading members of the Soviet Union to ensure its future. He suggested Joseph Stalin be removed from his position as General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party's Central Committee.

Lenin wanted the testament to be read out at the XII Party Congress of the Russian Communist Party to be held in April 1923. However, after Lenin's third stroke in March 1923 left him paralyzed and unable to speak, the testament was kept secret by his wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya, in hopes of Lenin's eventual recovery. Only after Lenin's death on January 21, 1924, did she turn the document over to the Communist Party Central Committee Secretariat and ask that it be made available to the delegates of the XIII Party Congress in May 1924.

Lenin's testament presented the ruling triumvirate or troika (Joseph Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev) with an uncomfortable dilemma. On the one hand, they would have preferred to suppress the testament since it was critical of all three of them as well as of their ally Nikolai Bukharin and their opponents Leon Trotsky and Georgy Pyatakov. Although Lenin's comments were damaging to all Communist leaders, Joseph Stalin stood to lose the most since the only practical suggestion in the testament was to remove him from the position of the General Secretary of the Party's Central Committee.

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