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Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky Quotes

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Famous Leon Trotsky Quotes

“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.”

MenHumansFactsProblemOrderIndividualSocialExistenceBloodHe ManRedConcernedImportanceSacredTerrorHuman LifeRevolutionaryOppositionIronVegetarianSovietHistoricSanctionsSocial OrderSacrednessQuaker
Author:Leon Trotsky
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“The initiative of the Five Year Plan and of the accelerated collectivization belongs entirely to the Left Opposition, in uninterrupted and sharp struggles with the Stalinists. Not having the possibility of occupying myself here with long historical researches, I will limit myself to a single illustration. The Dnieprostroy is considered with right as the highest achievement of Soviet industrialization. Yet [Joseph] Stalin and his followers ([Clim] Voroshilov and others) a few months before the beginning of the work were decided opponents of the Dnieprostroy plan.”

YearsLongLeftStruggleFivePlansPossibilityMonthsLimitsAchievementHighestResearchDecidedHistoricalOpponentsFive YearsOppositionFollowersSovietInitiativeIllustrationIndustrializationHistorical ResearchFive Year Plans
Author:Leon Trotsky
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“Only when the kulak refused to deliver grain to the State did [Joseph] Stalin, under the pressure of the Left Opposition, accomplish a sharp turn. Being the empiricist that he is, he moved, to the opposite extreme, and set as a task for two or three years the collectivization of all the peasantry, the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, and the compression of the Five Year Plan into four years.”

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Author:Leon Trotsky
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“In a country where the sole employer is the State, opposition means death by slow starvation. The old principle: who does not work shall not eat, has been replaced by a new one: who does not obey shall not eat.”

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Book:The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and where is it Going?
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“If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.”

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Book:Literature and Revolution
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