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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 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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Where the sole employer is the state, [opposition] means death by slow starvation.
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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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It is also false that the revolution ripens and comes to development only in the national soil.
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Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.
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Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.
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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.
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Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.
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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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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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Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.
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In spite of the existence of the Soviet Union, however, the proletarian revolution during the past years has not recorded a victory in any other country.
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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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Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.
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The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls 'inspiration.'
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The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A 'neutral' position is tantamount to support of imperialism.
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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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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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There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.
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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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