From August 1923 to 1927, Boris Bazhanov, an employee of the TsKVKP (b) apparatus, served as assistant for Politburo affairs and secretary of the Politburo. Thanks to his official position, he witnessed the struggle for power that unfolded in the Central Committee between Stalin, Trotsky and Zinoviev after Lenin's retirement and after his death. And he could also see how personal and political relations developed between the leaders of the party elite of the USSR: Stalin, Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov, Molotov, Yagoda and others. In January 1928, disillusioned with the idea of ​ ​ communism, Boris Bazhanov fled to the West, where in 1930 he published a book of his memoirs, "Memoirs of the Former Secretary of Stalin."