Abstract: The article is focused on the study of collective leadership's potential as a variant of the evolution of the system of power in the Bolshevik party in the 1920s. The subject of this article is the structure and political culture of the oligarchic power model in the Bolshevik Party in the 1920s and their influence on the inner-party struggle in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). Understanding the mechanisms of the functioning of the highest echelon of power in the USSR is a prerequisite for studying the inner-party struggle of the 1920s as a complex issue. The methodological basis of this study is the historical-systematic method, which allowed the author to consider the inner-party struggle in the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in the 1920s through the prism of the functioning of the system of highest authority in the USSR. The scientific novelty of this research lies in that this view of the issue allowed the author to revise to a certain extent some ideas enrooted in historiography and to deepen the general understanding of the Stalinist dictatorship's genesis from the subsoil of the Bolshevik leadership. The author comes to the conclusion that the model of collective power was a logical continuation of the traditions that developed under Lenin. After Lenin, collective leadership was perceived in the party environment as the optimal direction of political development under the conditions of the absence of an unconditional leader of the party. In the minds of the Bolshevik functionaries, the mood of "unity" prevailed and the inner-party struggle was considered a dangerous phenomenon that represented the threat of undermining the dictatorship of the Bolshevik party and stability in the highest echelon of power. At the same time, as the study shows, the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee undoubtedly gave Stalin important advantages in the struggle for power, and yet this factor was not decisive in Stalin's victory in the inner-party struggle and the destruction of collective leadership.