Quote collection
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"The Federated Republic of Europe-the United States of Europe-that is what must be. National autonomy no longer suffices. Economic evolution demands the abolition of national frontiers. If Europe is to remain split into national groups, then Imperialism will recommence its work. Only a Federated Republic of Europe can give peace to the world."
"Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation."
"Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him."
"In 1917 there was not a single Bolshevik who considered possible the realization of a socialist society in a single country, and least of all in Russia."
"Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement."
"Can and must! The proclamation of this new conception of [Joseph Stalin] is closed by the same words, "Such are in general the characteristic features of Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution." In the course of a single year Stalin ascribed to [Vladimir] Lenin two directly opposed conceptions of the fundamental question of socialism. The first version represents the real tradition of the party; the second took shape in Stalin's mind only after the death of Lenin, in the course of the struggle against "Trotskyism"."
"With all due respect to all philistines, the dictatorship of the proletariat does just consist in "giving a hiding" to the classes that were previously supreme, before forcing them to recognize the new order and to submit to it."
"Nowhere else did repressions, purges, suppressions, and all other kinds of bureaucratic hooliganism in general acquire such horrifying scope as in Ukraine, in the struggle against powerful forces concealed in the Ukrainian masses that desired more freedom and independence."
"The theory of the permanent revolution, in contradiction to the theory of socialism in one country, was recognized by the entire Bolshevik party during the period from 1917 to 1923."
"[Vladimir] Lenin died in January, 1924; three months later [Joseph] Stalin expounded in writing Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution."
"The boycott of parliamentary institutions on the part of anarchists and semianarchists is dictated by a desire not to submit their weakness to a test on the part of the masses, thus preserving their right to an inactive hauteur which makes no difference to anybody. A revolutionary party can turn its back to a parliament only if it has set itself the immediate task of overthrowing the existing regime."
"The people will have the right to elect their representatives from a list of candidates [who have been approved by the Party]."
"As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the "sacredness of human life." We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And this problem can only be solved by blood and iron."
"Without a correct strategy the victory is impossible. But even the most correct strategy cannot give the victory under unfavorable objective conditions."
"England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse, and quite possibly it will prove to be the ward for particularly violent cases."
"As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sacredness of human life."
"The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture."
"Similar (of course, far from identical) irritations in similar conditions call out similar reflexes; the more powerful the irritation, the sooner it overcomes personal peculiarities. To a tickle, people react differently, but to a red-hot iron, alike. As a steam-hammer converts a sphere and a cube alike into sheet metal, so under the blow of too great and inexorable events resistances are smashed and the boundaries of "individuality" lost."
"Our party's most outstanding mediocrity."
"Transcending class distinctions, the speaker [Stalin] portrays the relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat as a mere division of labor. The workers and soldiers achieve the revolution, Guchkov and Miliukov "fortify" it.[...] This superintendent's approach to the historical process is exactly characteristic of the leaders of Menshevism, this handing out of instructions to various classes and then patronizingly criticizing their fulfillment."