What Lenin's testament said
1987 1987-12Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 10 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 10
Comrade Stalin, having become General Secretary, bas concentrated an enormous power in his hands; and I am not sure that he always knows how to use that power with sufficient caution.
On the other band, comrade Trotsky.... is distinguished not only by his exceptional ability-personally, he is, to be Sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee-but also by his far-reaching self-confidence and a disposition to be far too much attracted by the purely administrative side of affairs.
These two qualities of the two most able leaders of the present Central Committee might, quite innocently, lead to a split, and if our party does not take measures to prevent it, a split might rise unexpectedly...
Postscript: Stalin is too rude, and this fault, entirely supportable in relations among us communists, becomes unsupportable in the office of General Secretary.
Therefore, I propose to the comrades to find a way to remove Stalin from that position and appoint another man who in all respects differs from Stalin only in superiority-namely, more patient, more loyal, more polite, and more attentive to comrades, less capricious, etc...
LENIN Jan. 4, 1923