 Favouring new Communist Party members, many from worker and peasant backgrounds, to the "Old Bolsheviks" who tended to be university educated, he ensured he had loyalists dispersed across the country's regions.Stalin had much contact with young party functionaries, and the desire for promotion led many provincial figures to seek to impress Stalin and gain his favour.Stalin also developed close relations with the trio at the heart of the secret police (first the Cheka and then its replacement, the State Political Directorate)