Hello, and thank you for listening to The History of World War II podcast, Episode

196, Stalin, Lenin's protege.

Last time Stalin was officially sent south to Zarytsin to gather the local grain and send

it back to Lenin.

So he could feed Moscow, the Bolsheviks' current home and Petrograd.

Yet what he was really doing there was gathering power unto himself and removing all those

who were or wanted to be his peer.

During this time Stalin had stolen 10 million rubles from a man sent down by his fellow

Bolsheviks to assist and the man's trains.

Stalin had also had people killed, not for a sadistic pleasure, but to whip the locals

into a frenzy.

He wanted them feeling, not thinking, a tactic that would become common for him.

But Stalin had gone too far.

Joining with the local self-described Czecha, they, for personal gain, only had terrorized

the area.

And these men were supposed to be the ones protecting the people.

But now, General Pyotr Krasnov, the elected leader of the Don Kassik's, of the White

Army, opposed the Bolshevik Reds, had heard enough.

His army soon surrounded Zarytsin.

It was Zverelov, who wrote to Stalin, telling him of the assassination attempt against Lenin

in the Milkensin factory in Moscow in late August of 1918.

Telegrams flew back and forth between the two men.

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