Boris Bazhanov Boris Georgiyevich Bazhanov ( , sometimes spelled Bajanov ) ( 1900 – 1983 ) was a secretary of the Soviet Union ' s Politburo , and personal secretary to Joseph Stalin from August 1923 through 1925 . After holding several different positions in the Politburo from 1925 to 1928 , Bazhanov defected from the Soviet Union , and remains the only assistant of Stalin ' s secretariat to have done so . Stalin ' s subsequent attempts to hunt down and kill Bazhanov in France failed . From 1930 on , Bazhanov wrote and published memoirs and books about the secrets behind Stalin ' s actions , which continued to be published and translated after his death in Paris in 1983 . History . Early years . Boris Bazhanov was born in 1900 in Mogilev - Podolskiy , Russian Empire ( now in Vinnytsia Oblast , Ukraine ) . When Bazhanov was 17 , the Russian Revolution of 1917 splintered power in Ukraine causing the Ukrainian territory to be fought over by various factions . By 1921 , when Bazhanov was 21 , the territory of modern - day Ukraine was divided between Soviet Ukraine ( which would become a constituent republic of the Soviet Union ) and Poland , with small regions belonging to Czechoslovakia and Romania . In 1919 , Bazhanov joined the local Communist Party organization and was soon afterward elected district secretary . Quickly rising through local party posts in Ukraine , he went to Moscow to study engineering in November 1920 . In 1922 he applied for a technical position with the Central Committee apparatus and was accepted by Ksenofontoff . On August 9 , 1923 , Bazhanov was named assistant to Stalin based on a decision of the organization bureau that read , " Comrade Bazhanov is named assistant to Joseph Stalin and a secretary of the . " Stalin ' s assistant . As Stalin ' s assistant , Bazhanov became Secretary of the Politburo and was responsible for taking notes of the meetings . On October 26 , 1923 , Bazhanov took notes at a Central Committee meeting attended by Vladimir Lenin , Joseph Stalin , and Leon Trotsky at a time when Lenin was very ill and just three months before his death . During the meeting , Lenin offered to appoint Trotsky as his " heir . " According to Bazhanov ' s notes , Trotsky turned down the job of deputy leader because he was Jewish , reasoning " We should not give our enemies the opportunity to say that our country was being ruled by a Jew . . . . It would be far better if there was not a single Jew in the first Soviet revolutionary government . " After Lenin ' s death in January 1924 , Stalin , Kamenev , and Zinoviev together governed the party , placing themselves ideologically between Trotsky ( on the left wing of the party ) and Nikolay Bukharin ( on the right ) . Trotsky eventually was forced into exile in Mexico , where he was assassinated in 1940 by a Stalinist agent . Bazhanov ' s notes were discovered in early 1990 by Soviet historian Victor Danilov and used in support of an answer to one of the mysteries of the Bolshevik Revolution : why Leon Trotsky refused Vladimir Lenin ' s offer to appoint him as heir . During the years 1923 - 1924 , Bazhanov attended all the meetings of the Politburo and worked in Stalin ' s secretariat and for the politburo to the end of 1925 . In the early 1920s , Bazhanov ' s role in Stalin ' s inner circle was smaller than that of the " group of five " composed of Yakov Brezanovsky , Ivan Tovstukha , Amayak Nazaretyan , Georgy Kanner , and Lev Mekhlis . Bazhanov ' s influence with Stalin increased after Brezanovsky and Nazaretyan left the secretariat . Bazhanov was able to hold on to different positions at the Politburo from 1925 to 1928 . Soviet defector . Dissatisfied with contributing to Communism , Bazhanov crossed the border to Iran to defect from the Soviet Union on January 1 , 1928 , the same year that the first of Stalin ' s Five - Year Plans for the National Economy of the Soviet Union was accepted . Bazhanov would be the only assistant of Stalin ' s secretariat who would turn against the Soviet regime . Bazhanov subsequently was granted asylum in France . Through his defection , Bazhanov became an enemy of Stalin . Bazhanov was pursued by a manhunt led by Georges Agabekov , who was the chief Soviet spy in the Near East at that time until Agabekov himself defected in France in June 1930 . In October 1929 , Stalin ordered assassin Yakov Blumkin to travel through Paris to the island of Prinkipo in Istanbul , Turkey to assassinate Trotsky . While in Paris , Blumkin was to assassinate Bazhanov . With the help of his cousin and GPU informer Arkady Maximov , Blumkin staged a car accident . However , the car accident failed to kill Bazhanov . Bazhanov fought in a formation of Russian emigres with the Finnish Army in the defence against the Soviet war to conquer that country . In the conclusion of the 1978 book " The Storm Petrels : The Flight of the First Soviet Defectors " , Bazhanov remarked on " the twisted path of Marxism " : " You know , as I do , that our civilization stands on the edge of an abyss . . . Those who seek to destroy it put forth an ideal . This ideal [ of communism ] has been proven false by the experience of the last sixty years . . . the problem of bringing freedom back to Russia is not insoluble . . . the youth of Russia no longer believe in the system , despite the fact that they have known nothing else . If the West [ develops its ] confidence and unity , [ it ] can win the battle for our civilization and set humanity on the true path to progress , not the twisted path of Marxism . " Bazhanov published an edition of his memoirs in France in 1980 , entitled " Memoirs of a Secretary of Stalin ' s " . Bazhanov died in France in January 1983 . Editions of Bazhanov ' s memoirs . Retracted parts of the first edition . The 1930 edition of Bazhanov ' s memoir had him becoming an anti - Communist well before he came to Moscow and took up positions with the Central Committee . In later editions , Bazhanov retracted these statements , explaining that in reality he soured on the Communist ideology during 1923 – 1924 , while working at the Central Committee . However , he was bound to protect his closet - dissident friends remaining behind in the USSR , by casting himself as a " lone avenger " figure .