It always interested me that one of the most murderous dictators of the last century officially held the benign-sounding title of ‘General Secretary.’ From what I understand, Stalin occupied relatively minor post and proceeded to make the post more powerful, rather than assuming an already-powerful post and consolidating power like you tended to see in the west. It was also known that Lenin didn’t think Stalin suited to his role and that Trotsky was a bitter rival. How does a guy like Stalin build a power base out of a relatively minor post and essentially against the wishes of the public faces of the Bolsheviks to the point that he did?
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What makes you a good revolutionary doesn’t necessarily make you a good administrator, but you have to find people to do it.
Stalin gets to be the General Secretary, and that means he runs the Communist Party. As the Communist Party runs the government and the country this means he has great influence, as he gets to put people of his choice into important positions and people who want a position know to go to him or his cronies.
It is also highly relevant that Stalin is extremely talented, ruthless and almost entirely without scruple allying with people to destroy their mutual enemies and then discarding or destroying his former allies when he has no further use for them
Also within a lot of regimes, especially Communist ones, the actual job title doesn’t matter very much. Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev were never Head of State; Stalin doesn’t even become Head of Government until 1941.
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