How did Stalin rise to power?

He killed off the opposition.

But he didnt start his killing until the mid 1930's, thats how he consolidated his power.How did he become leader?

Stalin would have killed Trotsky if he could have, because Trotsky was a rival, and had made the Red Army his personal bailiwick. But he couldn't, so he accused Trotsky of ideological heresy, and drove him from the country. Trotsky was later murdered, and most believe Stalin was behind it. The Soldiers and Sailors Soviet in Petrograd has originally lead the Russian Revolution (before the Bolshevik Revolution) and it became the Petrograd Soviet. They defied the Moscow Soviet (petty squabbling between cities which dated back more than two hundred yeas at that time), but when the Moscow Soviet largely backed Kornilov's right-wing coup attempt, they were discredited, and that left the Petrograd Soviet in a position of superiority, especially after the Bolshevik Revolution brought down Kerensky's government.

The leaders of the Petrograd Soviet, such as Zinoviev, Litvinov, Kamenev and Stalin became members of the Central Committee when the Bolsheviks shut down the Constituent Assembly. The Social Democratic Labor Party had split in 1903, with Lenin declaring a parliamentary victory within the party, and therefore claiming he and his followers were bolsheviki, which is to say, the majority--they were not. Most members of the party's central committee remained loyal to Martov, and were dubbed the mensheviki, or minority. They sponsored the 1905 revolution, which was ruthlessly crushed. Stalin was later exiled to Siberia as a Menshevik, but he had already decided the best chance lay with the Bolsheviks and was, unknown to most Russians, a Bolshevik from the very beginning.

After the Russian Revolution and before the Bolshevik Revolution, Stalin and Trotsky had organized an underground Bolsehvik cell in Petrograd, and Stalin became the editor of Pravda (which means truth). But when Lenin came to Petrograd with German connivance in 1917, he declared that the local Bolsheviks were betraying the revolutionary principles of Marxism, and ruthlessly purged the local leadership. Stalin managed to survive, despite Pravda's support of Kerensky's Provisional government, and the lesson of the purgre was not lost on him.

In reaction to the closure of the Constituent Assembly, Fanya Kaplan, a member of the Socialist Revolutionary Party (usually referred to as the Social Revolutionaries) reacted by attempting to assassinate Lenin in 1918. Lenin survived, but he was never completely healthy thereafter, and he was easily distracted, taking less of a hand in the intrigues of the central committee. Zinoviev and Kamenev had been loyal Bolsheviks from 1903, and therefore weilded immense power in the Central Committee. Stalin understood that he could not attack them directly, so he helped to arrange that the principle members of the Petrograd Soviet would be sent to the west on the economic missions to France and England in the 1920s. He also helped to protect members of the Moscow Soviet who might have been condemned for their support of Kornilov, and therefore made them politically beholden to him. Felix Dzerzhinsky, who had also been a loyal Bolshevik from the beginning, was made the head of the Special State Committee to Combat Terrorism, i.e., the Cheka, the father of the NKVD, and grandfather of the KGB. Stalin cultivated him, and with his cooperation, was able to lodge charges in the Central Committe against Kamenev, Zinoviev and Litvinov, as well as other powerful members of the former Petrograd Soviet. Therefore, with purges of the Central Committee, Stalin was able to have the opposition judicially murdered. The show trials and purges of the 1930's, and the slaughter of the Kulaks were simply removing potential opposition, he had already arranged to have all other real competitors killed off long before.

Like Setanta said above, Stalin became leader by killing off his rivals and frightening others with his ruthlessness. As Party Secretary he had a particularily strong position to begin with, and it didn't take him long to eliminate the most obvious rivals.

There is a story, perhaps only a story, that one day walking along a path inside the Kremlin, Stalin found a crippled bird. Just a chick really that had fallen from the nest. Stalin gently picked up the bird, stroking it with his gloved thumb while talking with his aide. After a few steps, Stalin seemed to remember the bird in the palm of his hand. He looked down at it, and calmly crushed its little body in his fist. He continued his walk and conversation. That was Stalin.

Stalin was funded by Wall street.

That's a provocative take on the man's rise to power, EG. Would you care to expand on that?