In a post-script of dubious origin, it is also suggested Joseph Stalin be removed from his position as General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party's Central Committee.

[6] Some suggested that his sickness could have been caused by metal oxidation from the bullets that were lodged in his body from the 1918 assassination attempt; in April 1922 he underwent a surgical operation to remove them.

[29][30] Prior to the introduction of the factional ban in 1921, due to intra-party controversies and the wider conflict of the Civil War, Trotsky had a considerable following among the party activists and members of the Central Committee against the narrow majority supporting Lenin.

[34][35][36][37][38] All evidence suggests that Lenin spent the winter of 1923 preparing to launch an attack on Stalin during the Twelfth Party Congress and had approached Trotsky to take on responsibility for the Georgian Affair.

[41] An early, typed version of the testament, which was based on the shorthand notes, was burned by Lenin's secretary, Mariya Volodicheva on the orders of Stalin.

[53] However, the Testament has been accepted as genuine by other historians, including E. H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Dmitri Volkogonov, Vadim Rogovin and Oleg Khlevniuk,[54][55] and Kotkin's argument was specifically rejected by Richard Pipes.

[56] Moshe Lewin cited the document as a representation of Lenin's views and argued that “the Soviet regime underwent a long period of “Stalinism”, which in its basic features was diametrically opposed to the recommendations of the testament”.

Historian Ronald Suny wrote that Kotkin's hypothesis lacked mainstream support in a review: "Few other scholars doubt the authorship of the document, which accurately reflected Lenin’s views, nor was it questioned at the time it was written and debated in high party circles.

[58][59] Conversely, historian Mark Edele was critical of this hypothesis and argued that Kotkin "went as far as embracing the empirically shaky thesis that Lenin’s 'Testament' was a forgery.

[61] Historian Peter Kenez believed that Trotsky could probably have removed Stalin with the use of Lenin's testament but he acquiesced to the collective decision not to publish the document.

[64][65][66] Historian Vadim Rogovin cited a letter written by Grigori Zinoviev between July and August 1923 which referenced Lenin's characterization of Stalin in the testament as "a thousand times correct".

Rogovin also cited a published correspondence from Zinoviev and Bukharin which was addressed to Stalin and stated, "there exists a letter by V.I., in which he advised (the Twelfth Party Congress) not to elect you Secretary".

[68] Old Bolshevik and historian, Vladimir Nevsky, believed that Stalin was appointed the General Secretary because he used false rumors to convince Lenin that the party faced a split.

In the 30 December 1922 article, Nationalities Issue, Lenin criticized the actions of Felix Dzerzhinsky, Grigoriy Ordzhonikidze and Stalin in the Georgian Affair by accusing them of "Great Russian Chauvinism".

Infatuation in politics generally and usually plays the worst role.Lenin also criticised other Politburo members: [T]he October episode with Zinoviev and Kamenev [their opposition to seizing power in October 1917] was, of course, no accident, but neither can the blame for it be laid upon them personally, any more than non-Bolshevism can upon Trotsky.Finally, he criticised two younger Bolshevik leaders, Bukharin and Pyatakov: They are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures (among the younger ones), and the following must be borne in mind about them: Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favorite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with the great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of dialectics, and, I think, never fully appreciated it).

Both of these remarks, of course, are made only for the present, on the assumption that both these outstanding and devoted Party workers fail to find an occasion to enhance their knowledge and amend their one-sidedness.Isaac Deutscher, a biographer of both Trotsky and Stalin, wrote that "the whole testament breathed uncertainty".

[72] Lenin's testament presented the ruling triumvirate or troika (Joseph Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev) with an uncomfortable dilemma.

Although Lenin's comments were damaging to all of the 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.

As a result, the testament did not have the effect that Lenin had hoped for, and Stalin retained his position as General Secretary, with the notable help of Aleksandr Petrovich Smirnov, then People's Commissar of Agriculture.

[77] In February 1940, Trotsky would write his own "Testament" modelled on Lenin's, shortly before his assassination, in which he reiterated his belief in a communist future of mankind and that his personal honour among thousands of other purged victims would be rehabilitated by a "new revolutionary generation".

After surviving multiple attempts on his life, Trotsky was assassinated in August 1940 in Mexico City by Ramón Mercader, an agent of the Soviet NKVD.

[80] From the time that Stalin consolidated his position as the unquestioned leader of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union, in the late 1920s, all references to Lenin's testament were considered anti-Soviet agitation and punishable as such.

After Nikita Khrushchev's On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, in 1956, the document was finally published officially by the Soviet government.