“Do not appoint an official deputy”: an attempted takeover of power by Ya. Sverdlov as V. Lenin is injured

The article examines a fairly unknown episode of confrontation between Ya.M. Sverdlov, “Chairman of Central Committee”, head of All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets, and L.D. Trotsky, People’s Commissar for War, on the one hand, and V.I. Lenin, the founder and self-perpetuating member of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party, the Bolsheviks’ leader, chairman of the Soviet of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Russia, on the other hand. The confrontation reached its culmination point during meetings of the Central Committee and the Bureau of the Bolshevik party held at the end of the summer and early autumn of 1918 following V.I. Lenin’s gunshot injury. The article highlights the significant role played by G.E. Zinoviev, head of the Bolsheviks of Petrograd. The analysis of this role was done with reference to Zinoviev’s note, the author’s unique archival find. This note sent to Moscow proposed reshuffles in the party and state leadership. It is concluded that Sverdlov’s scheme that aimed to change “the reduced contingent” of the Central Committee and its Bureau and to place on top of “the Republic surrounded by fronts” a powerful tandem consisting of Trotsky, the head of the newly formed Revolutionary Soviet for War, and Sverdlov himself, the latter seeing himself as a new “leader” of the Bolsheviks in place of the wounded (and possibly dying) Lenin. However, after Lenin’s recovery this bureaucratic scheme of Sverdlov turned out a Pyrrhic victory for him.