In April 1922, at the XI Party Congress, Joseph Dzhugashvili was handed a dull bureaucratic post: General Secretary of the Central Committee. The job was considered so technical that Lenin and his circle treated it with open indifference. Nobody wanted to shuffle papers, sign off on appointments, or maintain the card index of party cadres. None of Lenin's comrades came anywhere close to suspecting that the card index itself was the future of power.
read more..