Until shortly before his death, Lenin worked to counter the disproportionate political influence of Joseph Stalin in the Communist Party and in the bureaucracy of the soviet government, partly because of abuses he had committed against the populace of Georgia, and partly because the autocratic Stalin had accumulated administrative power disproportionate to his office of General Secretary of the Communist Party.[28][29] The counter-action against Stalin aligned with Lenin's advocacy of the right of self-determination for the national and ethnic groups of the former Tsarist Empire, which was a key theoretic concept of Leninism.[29] Lenin warned that Stalin has "unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution", and formed a factional bloc with Leon Trotsky to remove Stalin as the General Secretary of the Communist Party.[17][30]