[3] Even though Stalin had been condemned as "too rude and... intolerable" and recommended for dismissal by the late Lenin in his "Last Testament,"[4] Stalin nonetheless successfully retained his position as General Secretary and crafted a powerful public association with Lenin's personality cult.
Stalin's supporters used Trotsky's former disputes with Lenin to condemn him, and his theory of "permanent revolution" would become the main object of attack in the great theoretical debates following the 13th Party Congress.
[2] Among the many issues that dominated the 13th Party Congress, the factional split between the Left Opposition and the "troika" was a major divider.
Trotsky and the Left Opposition argued that world revolution was required for the success of socialism, since the Soviet Union could not survive on its own without any aid from Western economies.
Nonetheless, the Congress chose to not to publish this letter, and Stalin retained his post as General-Secretary until his death in 1953.