Even though luck was the key factor which provided Stalin with the opportunity to in crease his power; the weakness and mistakes of his opponents carried a great importance in determining Stalin’s position in 1929. When Lenin died in 1924, “he left no obvious successor” (M.Lynch). There were 4 main candidates in line for the role, Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev. It is the view of C.Corin and T.Fiehn that the “contest for leadership was really between Trotsky and Stalin”. Initially, in 1924, Trotsky has the upper hand against his rivals. “Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev feared Trotsky”, (M.Whittock) as he was one of the ‘Bolsheviks best orators”. However, Trostky abused his position, as has he made several crucial mistakes, which Stalin benefited from.

      Furthermore, Trotsky was incredibly 'arrogant' and this was conveyed on occasions such as October 1923, where he openly critcisized the governments economic policy, which thus caused the widespread rumours that he was a factionalist. Trotsky's crucial mistakes and arrogance caused Stalin's reputation to grow amongst the party and people believed that he had extreme loyality. Later on, Trotsky wrote that if he had "come forward on the eve of the Twelfth Congress" he would have "been victorious". However, for Trotsky, this little brainwave, came little, too late.
Thus we are able to conclude that Stalin's oponents weaknesses, alongside the element of luck, were key to Stalin's asscend to power. If Trostky hadn't have abused his position and conveyed a huge amount of disloyality to the party, his position would have been strong and he could easily have wiped Stalin right of the picture, as his contributions to the party were "if not equal, but that of Lenin himself." But, Stalin's opponents weaknesses worked together with the element of 'luck' to put Stalin at a presidented advantage. Also, J.N.Westwood's view that Stalin opponents "dug their own graves" is credible in this argument

Today, I made some good progressw with my project.

Firstly, I made a small earpiece like advert for my article

Secondly , I made my layout more profesional.