Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky; born Lev Davidovich Bronstein; 7 November 1879 – 21 August 1940) was a Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founding leader of the Red Army...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth7 November 1879
CountryRussian Federation
things-in-life realization life-is
One of the most surprising things in life is the sudden realization that one has become old
lasts england revolutionary
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.
party people lists
The people will have the right to elect their representatives from a list of candidates [who have been approved by the Party].
revenge powerful most-powerful
The revenge of history is more powerful than the revenge of the most powerful General Secretary.
stars believe ignorance
Not only in peasant homes, but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside the twentieth century, the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic powers of signs and exorcisms . . . movie stars to mediums. Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man's genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness, ignorance and savagery!
squares red offensive
Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.
destiny rulership firsts
The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.
party differences desire
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.
mirrors literature shaving
If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the "mirror" of literature?
powerful blow irritation
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.
life fall sadness
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.
war mean fighting
A program of "disarmament," while imperialist antagonisms survive, is the most pernicious of fictions. Even if it were realized by way of general agreement - an obviously fantastic assumption!- that would by no means prevent a new war. The imperialists do not make war because there are armaments; on the contrary, they forge arms when they need to fight.
order class giving
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.
discussion great russian-revolutionary time
If we had had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.