it, no other Marxist movement at the time succeeded in keeping power in its hands. This issue is subject to conflicting views on communist history by various Marxist groups and parties. Joseph Stalin later rejected this idea, stating that socialism was possible in one country. The confusion regarding Stalin's position on the issue stems from the fact that, after Lenin's death in 1924, he successfully used Lenin's argument – the argument that socialism's success needs the support of workers of other countries in order to happen – to defeat his competitors within the party by accusing them of betraying Lenin and, therefore, the ideals of the October Revolution. Historiography Few events in historical research have been as conditioned by political influences as the October Revolution. The historiography of the Revolution generally divides into three schools of thought: the Soviet-Marxist view, the Western Totalitarian view, and the Revisionist (Trotskyist) view. Since the fall of Communism (and the USSR) in Russia in 1991, the Western-Totalitarian view has again become dominant and the Soviet-Marxist view has practically vanished in mainstream political analysis. Following the death of Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik government was thrown into a crisis. Lenin failed to designate who his successor would be or how they would be chosen. A power struggle broke out in the party between Leon Trotsky and his enemies. Trotsky was defeated by the anti-Trotsky bloc by the mid 1920s and his hopes for party leadership was dashed. Among Trotsky's opponents, Joseph Stalin would rise to assume unchallenged party leadership by 1928. In 1927 Trotsky was expelled from the party and in 1929 he lost his citizenship and was sent into exile. While in exile he began honing his own interpretation of Marxism called Trotskyism. The schism between Trotsky and Stalin is the focal point where the Revisionist view comes into existence. Trotsky traveled across the world denouncing Stalin and the Soviet Union under his leadership. He specifically focused his criticism on Stalin's doctrine, Socialism in One Country, claiming that it was incongruent with the ideology of the revolution. Eventually, Trotsky settled in Mexico City and began a base of operations for him and his supporters. In 1937 at the height of the Great Purge, he published the Revolution Betrayed which outlined his ideological contradictions with Stalin, and how Stalin was guilty of subverting and debasing the 1917 revolution. He continued to vocally criticize Stalin and Stalinism