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I wrote a study about this question, The Lessons of October, which served as a pretext for my elimination from the government.

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
Lessons
Question
Study
Government
Pretext
Elimination
October
Served
Wrote

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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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Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.
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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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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.
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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.
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A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.
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In France, the leader of Jacobinism perished on the guillotine with us, the change of leadership was achieved by means of arrest and banishment. The technique of the process is gentler, but its essence is the same.
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Fascism is a caricature of Jacobinism.
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[Joseph] Stalin closes the exposition of these [Leon Trotsky] ideas with the words, Such are in general the characteristic features of [Vladimir] Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution.
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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.
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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.
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Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
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Is it possible to fulfill this task, is it possible to achieve the definite victory of Socialism in one country without the combined efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is impossible.
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Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.
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Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.
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Revolutions are always verbose.
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Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
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Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler his body will become more harmonious, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above these heights, new peaks will rise.
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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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The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.
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