Word: commissars
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...mass demonstration of grief; but the crowd responded only with passive sullenness. In Bucharest there was thinly concealed satisfaction on the faces of Rumanians in the street, and a flurry of minor panic among Communist officials. Cars came & went in a steady stream at the home of Rumanian Commissar Gheor-ghiu-Dej, and police guards were expanded at Red Ministers' homes. In some Rumanian villages, small-fry Communist's carried clubs or staves for protection, because they were not sure how people would react. Plain people around Prague were reported guardedly joyful. Red officials were so uncertain...
...Siberia, but took small part in these momentous events. U.S. Journalist John Reed did not even mention him in Ten Days That Shook the World. But Stalin, the Inside Man, emerged as one of the seven members of the party's political bureau and was appointed Commissar of Nationalities. Joked Lenin: "No intelligence is needed, that is why we've put Stalin there...
...Marriage. Trotsky skyrocketed into world prominence as organizer and Commissar of the Red army in the civil war. Stalin, in charge of the defense of Tsaritsyn (later Stalingrad), kept up a running feud with Trotsky and carried the war, against orders, into his native Georgia. In these violent days, he was married a second time, to Nadezhda Allilueva. the pretty daughter of the Petrograd worker in whose house he had once been arrested...
Among the Socialist intellectuals of her home town, the swarthy, shock-haired Georgian added nothing to the brilliant debates in which such men as Lunacharsky, Commissar of Education, the historian Pokrovsky, and Ryazanov, biographer of Marx, took part. His harsh Georgian accent put him at a disadvantage in public speechmaking. Someone asked: "Who is Stalin?" Snapped Trotsky: "The most eminent mediocrity in the Party." But Stalin worked purposefully in committees. His Nationalities Commissariat, which had begun with a bare table in a bare room, numbered hundreds of "experts" and his control extended over 65 million of Russia...
Master of All. A year later Stalin, now master of all appointments, had Trotsky deposed as Commissar for War. Taking fright, Zinoviev and Kamenev sought to re-establish friendship with Trotsky, but the new boss was listening. In 1926 Stalin got from a party conference a sweeping condemnation of Trotskyites and Zinovievites alike. Trotsky and his erstwhile friends were through. A year later, Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev were formally expelled from the party. Soon after that, Trotsky was forcibly removed from Moscow and sent to Alma Ata in Central Asia. He was expelled from Russia in January...