Title: Rise of Joseph Stalin
Content:  Before his 1913-1917 exile in Siberia, Stalin was one of the Bolshevik operatives in the Caucasus, organizing cells, spreading propaganda, and raising money through criminal activities. Stalin eventually earned a place in Lenin's inner circle and the highest echelons of the Bolshevik hierarchy. His pseudonym, Stalin, means "man of the steel hand". The October Revolution took place in the Russian capital of Petrograd on 7 November 1917 (O.S. 25 October 1917), which saw the transfer of all political power to the Soviets. In the Russian Civil War that followed, Stalin forged connections with various Red Army generals and eventually acquired military powers of his own. He brutally suppressed counter-revolutionaries and bandits. After winning the civil war, the Bolsheviks moved to expand the revolution into Europe, starting with Poland, which was fighting the Red Army in Ukraine. As joint commander of an army in Ukraine and later in Poland itself, Stalin's actions in the war were later criticized by many, including Leon Trotsky.
Title: Rise of Joseph Stalin
Content:  canceled the cooperation with Zinoviev and Kamenev a long time before Trotsky's final decline. He slowly but steadily desired to get rid of his two former Triumvirate-companions. During this phase, Stalin instead joined forces with others of the Bolshevik Party. Together with Bukharin, Tomsky and Rykov, Stalin could now rather easily send Zinoviev and Kamenev to Gulag (thus far just briefly), and by 1929, all struggles for power were over. Stalin was now the leader of the Soviet Union. Millions of Russians and people of other ethnic origin inside the Soviet Union had been killed during the Russian Civil War.
Title: Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928
Content:  monstrous results? What made Stalin capable of such cruelty, and how did he manage to accumulate the power to practice it?" In contrast to most other biographies of Stalin, which portray Stalin in the early years of the revolution as a minor figure of little importance, Kotkin details how Stalin in these years was an ambitious organizer, intriguer and political infighter, and this experience ultimately prepared him to win the Bolshevik power struggle after Lenin's death. Noted scholar of Soviet history Ronald Grigor Suny states, "Reversing Trotsky’s famous conclusion that 'Stalin did not create the apparatus. The apparatus created him,' Kotkin shows 
Title: Rise of Joseph Stalin
Content:  a critical shortfall in grain supplies prompted Stalin to push for collectivisation of agriculture. Stalin began pushing for more rapid industrialisation and central control of the economy, a position which alienated Bukharin and the Right Opposition, but which appeared close to what the Left Opposition had advocated before they were banned. Stalin accused Bukharin of factionalism and capitalist tendencies. The other Politburo members sided with Stalin, and labelled Bukharin a "Right Deviationist" from Marxist–Leninist principles. Bukharin was ejected from the Politburo in November 1929. Stalin's agricultural policies were also criticized by fellow Politburo member Mikhail Kalinin. In the summer of 1930, Stalin exposed Kalinin's 
Title: Rise of Joseph Stalin
Content:  After the United Opposition were illegalized in December 1927, the Kulaks and NEPmen were emboldened and exerted much greater economic pressure on the Soviet government in the months afterwards. In January 1928, Stalin personally travelled to Siberia where he oversaw the seizure of grain stockpiles from kulak farmers. Many in the Communist Party supported the seizures, but Bukharin and Premier Rykov were outraged. Bukharin criticized Stalin's plans for rapid industrialization financed by kulak wealth, and advocated a return to Lenin's NEP. However, Bukharin was unable to rally sufficient support from the higher levels of the Communist Party to oppose Stalin. By the latter months of 
Title: Joseph Stalin
Content:  As a Marxist–Leninist, Stalin expected an inevitable conflict between competing capitalist powers; after Nazi Germany annexed Austria and then part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, Stalin recognised a war was looming. He sought to maintain Soviet neutrality, hoping that a German war against France and Britain would lead to Soviet dominance in Europe. Militarily, the Soviets also faced a threat from the east, with Soviet troops clashing with the expansionist Japanese in the latter part of the 1930s. Stalin initiated a military build-up, with the Red Army more than doubling between January 1939 and June 1941, although in its haste to expand many of its officers were poorly trained. Between 1940 and 1941 he also purged the military, leaving 
Title: Joseph Stalin
Content:  (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before eventually joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He went on to edit the party's newspaper, Pravda, and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection rackets. Repeatedly arrested, he underwent several internal exiles. After the Bolsheviks seized power during the October Revolution and created a one-party state under the newly formed Communist Party in 1917, Stalin joined its governing Politburo. Serving in the Russian Civil War before overseeing the Soviet Union's establishment in 1922, Stalin assumed leadership over the country following Lenin's death in 1924. Under Stalin, socialism in one country became a central tenet of the party's dogma. As a result 
Title: Apocalypse: Stalin
Content:  against Stalin. The latter made serious mistakes which allowed the German army to initiate a lightning advance, putting the Soviet Union in danger. During the winter of 1941, the Germans were at the gates of Moscow, which could change Stalin's fate. The world is holding its breath. Red: after the death of Lenin, Stalin became head of the Soviet Union by using cold maneuvers punctuated by violence and intimidation. He eliminates all his opponents, starting with Trotsky who was ousted from the government in 1924, from the Communist Party in 1927, and finally exiled. The latter was opposed to the increasing bureaucratization of the regime embodied by Stalin. For a 
Title: Patronage
Content:  After Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin's retirement from politics in March 1923 following a stroke, a power struggle began between Soviet Premier Alexei Rykov, Pravda editor Nikolai Bukharin, Profintern leader Mikhail Tomsky, Red Army founder Leon Trotsky, former Premier Lev Kamenev, Comintern leader Grigory Zinoviev, and General Secretary Joseph Stalin. Stalin used patronage to appoint many Stalinist delegates (such as Vyacheslav Molotov, Lazar Kaganovich, Grigory Ordzhonikidze, and Mikhail Kalinin) to the Party Politburo and Sovnarkom in order to sway the votes in his favour, making Stalin the effective leader of the country by 1929.
Title: Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928
Content:  In the first part of the volume, Kotkin explores the world that Ioseb Jugashvili developed in and details how this world was the primary force that transformed him into the person of Joseph Stalin. The author takes time to detail the various circumstances in Russia that impacted Stalin's development, such as the impact of the 1905-06 revolution, the unfolding disaster Russia faced in World War I, and the poverty and hopelessness of the average Russian worker, soldier, and sailor. In the Slavic Review, Lewis H. Siegelbaum comments, "Kotkin insists on presenting a panoply of structural forces and contingencies. Among the former is the Russian autocratic system and its fitful modernizations; the "European castle-in-the air project of socialism" and its bastardized Bolshevik version; global 

Question: what led to stalin rise in power?
Answer: In 1912, Lenin, who was forced to flee the country, chose him to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik party, which had now broken from the Social Democrats.