Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-24577079-20150203011715/@comment-32656-20150209115718

Molotov was nowhere near the top in the 1920s anyway.

Economy better off in some ways, but not others. More stable, but less industrialized.

Way I see it, there are six possibilities if Stalin does not get power: Mikhail Frunze, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev, Alexei Rykov, Nikolai Bukharin, or a military coup, likely led by Mikhail Tukhachevsky.