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The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.

Leon Trotsky

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Leon Trotsky
Age: 60 †
Born: 1879
Born: January 1
Died: 1940
Died: January 1
Autobiographer
Diplomat
Historian
Journalist
Military Personnel
Philosopher
Politician
Revolutionary
Writer
N. Trotsky
Lev Bronstein
Lev Davidovich Bronshtein
Lev Davidovich Bronstein
Leon Trotski
Struggle
Smells
Greatest
Serves
Class
Grave
Waiting
Graves
Party
Smell
Wafted
Upon
Period
Leans
Sense
Workers
Sharpening
Cannot
Periods
Bourgeoisie

More quotes by Leon Trotsky

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National self-sufficiency or autarchy is the ideal of [Adolf] Hitler, not of [Karl] Marx and [Vladimir] Lenin.
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In 1925 - 27 the revolution in China was destroyed by the false revolutionary strategy of the Stalinist faction. To this last question I consecrate my book, Problems of the Chinese Revolution (issued by the Pioneer Publishers, New York 1932).
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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.
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Terror, as the demonstration of the will and strength of the working class, is historically justified, precisely because the proletariat was able thereby to break the political will of the intelligentsia, pacify the professional man of various categories and work, and gradually subordinate them to its own aims within the field of their specialties.
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Root out the counterrevolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps... Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service.
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The people will have the right to elect their representatives from a list of candidates [who have been approved by the Party].
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Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.
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Dialectical thought is related to vulgar thinking in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion.
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The Left Opposition declared that the new tempo of industrialization were above our forces, and that the liquidation of the kulaks as a class in the course of three years was a fantastic task, if one wishes to say so, we find ourselves this time less radical than the Stalinists.
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The revolution has its own laws: in the period of its culmination it pushes the most highly developed, determined and far-seeing stratum of the revolutionary class to the most advanced positions.
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The Soviet State does not need either illusions or camouflage. It can claim only that world authority which is confirmed by the facts.
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Only in the Fall of 1924 did [Joseph] Stalin discover that it is especially Russia, as distinguished from other countries, which can by its own forces build up a socialist society.
Leon Trotsky
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Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.
Leon Trotsky
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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.
Leon Trotsky
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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.
Leon Trotsky
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Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
Leon Trotsky
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What shall we call an immediate possibility? In 1923 the situation in Germany was profoundly revolutionary, but what was lacking for a victorious revolution was a correct strategy.
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The slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into consideration the setting - the war and the revolution - and the character of the accused - revolutionary leaders of millions who were conducting their party to the sovereign power - you can say without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history.
Leon Trotsky
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Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.
Leon Trotsky
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Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravity.
Leon Trotsky