How was stalin's rise to power based on his ability and not on luck?

Stalin's rise to power was entirely down to his ability to manipulate those around him, to make the best of whatever hand he was dealt and his phenomenal memory.

Stalin was a very shrewd manipulator. Lenin had entrusted him with several posts that were seemingly of little importance. General Secretary of the Party for example.

Stalin used this post to control who was in - or out of the Party. Stalin then ensured that 'his' people were loyal to him because they wanted to keep their jobs - he did this by collecting information about everyone in the Party.

Once Lenin was dead Stalin was just as shrewd. He let other members of the Politburo present policies, and argue amongst themselves. The Politburo shot itself in the foot with the policy of Democratic Centralism - basically this meant that once the Politburo has discussed a problem & decided on a policy - there was to be no more debate about it.

Stalin then let everyone discuss programmes and problems - he then sided with the winning team & isolated the losers. He repeated this - isolating many of the Revolutionary Old Guard - until he was confident of success in removing them, through arrest, exile & murder.

Democratic centralism policy: 1917

Becomes Gen Sec of CPSU: 1922

Lenin dies: 1924

Removes the Left Opposition (Zinoviev & Kamenev) - 1927

Removes the Right Opposition (Rykov & Bukharin) - 1929

Becomes unchallenged leader of USSR - 1929 (perhaps)

Most often, people like Stalin (Hitler included) are able to rise to power when there's a break down in the existing government. These people happened to be in the right place at the right time politically, when there was little opposition.

Because in his position of general secretary, he became "dispenser of fame and fortune"(Trotsky) - in other words he had the ability to create loyalty based on jobs. He also utilized playing his ememies against each other, for example with the argument about continuing NEP, Bukharin vs Trotsky, and then turning against the other person. So it was his ability to manipulate, - not that I am condoning it I am just saying it wasn't luck because he did actively do things.

Well obviously he had some leadership qualities - was ruthless in his elimination of opponents. I never really looked at it this way before, but luck had to play a role somewhere in the process .... as he was eliminating his opponents - someone/some group was probably out there trying to eliminate him as well. He may have been lucky to avoid being killed.

It is well documented how lucky Hitler was to avoid assassination during his reign ... I can imagine that luck was involved with Stalin as well.

In such a dog-eat-dog situation (with no such Russian precedent before) there, he was clever enough to eliminate all his opponents in a tailor-made fashion to suit each and in the process not to get killed. It is 'Darwinism' and as the fittest to survive, he proved that he could 'deliver' on what he promised to himself and to USSR.