xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech at The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I. (December 1926) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/SEP26.html Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“We are in favour of the withering away of the state, and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents the most powerful and mighty of all forms of the state which have existed up to the present day. The highest development of the power of the state, with the object of preparing the conditions of the withering away of the state: that is the Marxist formula. Is it "contradictory"? Yes, it is "contradictory."”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

But this contradiction is a living thing and wholly reflects the Marxist dialectic. Address to the 16th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (1930) Quoted in: Alfred B. Evans, Soviet Marxism-Leninism: The Decline of an Ideology pg. 39 https://books.google.com/books?id=ezGGPIze4ZYC&pg=PA39&dq=withering+away+of+the+state+stalin&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAWoVChMIz_WZ46adxwIVR5YeCh1g7AKD#v=onepage&q=withering%20away%20of%20the%20state%20stalin&f=false Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“Is it possible, then, to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the German invaders? The enemy is not as strong as some terror-stricken pseudo-intellectuals picture him. The devil is not as terrible as he is painted.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech on the 24th Anniversary of the Revolution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IGbjPqFFvA (7 November 1941) Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“The press must grow day in and day out — it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech at The Twelfth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) (19 April 1923) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/TC23.html#s2 Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“Comrades, Red Army and Red Navy men, commanders and political instructors, men and women guerrillas! The whole world is looking to you as a force capable of destroying the brigand hordes of German invaders. The enslaved peoples of Europe under the yoke of the German invaders are looking to you as their liberators. A great mission of liberation has fallen to your lot. Be worthy of this mission! The war you are waging is a war of liberation, a just war.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech on the 24th Anniversary of the Revolution
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“The theory of "defeating" opportunist elements by the ideological struggle within the Party, the theory of "overcoming" these elements within the confines of a single party, is a rotten and dangerous theory, which threatens to condemn the Party to paralysis and chronic infirmity, threatens to leave the Party a prey to opportunism, threatens to leave the proletariat without a revolutionary party, threatens to deprive the proletariat of its main weapon in the fight against imperialism. Our Party could not have emerged on to the broad highway, it could not have seized power and organised the dictatorship of the proletariat, it could not have emerged victorious from the civil war, if it had had within its ranks people like Martov and Dan, Potresov and Axelrod. Our Party succeeded in achieving internal unity and unexampled cohesion of its ranks primarily because it was able to in good time to purge itself of the opportunist pollution, because it was able to rid its ranks of the Liquidators and Mensheviks. Proletarian parties develop and become strong by purging themselves of opportunists and reformists, social-imperialists and social-chauvinists, social-patriots and social-pacifists.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Source: The Foundations of Leninism, Ch.8

“We disagreed with Zinoviev and Kamenev because we knew that the policy of amputation was fraught with great dangers for the Party, that the method of amputation, the method of blood-letting — and they demanded blood — was dangerous, infectious: today you amputate one limb, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow a third — what will we have left in the Party?”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech at The Fourteenth Congress of the C.P.S.U.(B.) (December 1925) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/FC25.html Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the German people remain.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

"The Order #55 of the National Commissar for the Defense" (23 February 1942) http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1942/420223a.html Stalin said this when the enemy had reached the gate of Moscow during World War II. He called on the people not to identify all Germans with the Nazis. Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division, and from the antagonism between poor and rich, means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Interview http://www.rationalrevolution.net/special/library/cc835_44.htm with H. G. Wells (September 1937) Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews Variant: Which means Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division; and from the antagonism between poor and rich means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts.

“The State is a machine in the hands of the governing class for suppressing the resistance of its class antagonists. In this way the dictatorship of the proletariat differs in no way essentially from the dictatorship of any other class.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Voprosi Leninizma, Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo politicheskoy literaturi, (1939)
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“Nationalist in form; socialist in context.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

"Language Policy in the Soviet Union", Lenore A. Grenoble, New York: NY, Kluwer Academic Publishers (2003) p. 41.
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a "peace conference," you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and aeroplanes.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech "The Elections in St. Petersburg" (January 1913) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/ESP13.html Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

"What We Need", editorial published (24 October 1917), as quoted in Stalin : A Biography (2004) by Robert Service; also in Sochineniya, Vol. 3, p. 389
Variant translation:
The present imposter government, which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people, must be replaced by a government recognized by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants, and held accountable to their representatives
As quoted in The Bolsheviks Come to Power : The Revolution of 1917 in Petrograd (2004) by Alexander Rabinowitch, p. 252
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“He can't even shoot straight.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

On his son Yakov’s suicide attempt, as quoted in Encyclopedia of Useless Information (2007) by William Harston
Contemporary witnesses

“Does Djilas, who is himself a writer, not know what human suffering and the human heart are? Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a wench or takes some trifle?”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

In response to complaints about the rapes and looting committed by the Red Army during the Second World War, as quoted in Conversations with Stalin (1963) by Milovan Djilas, p. 95
Contemporary witnesses

“The writer is the engineer of the human soul.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Said by Stalin at a meeting of fifty top Soviet writers at Maxim Gorky's house in Moscow (26 October 1932), as quoted in Simon Sebag Montefiore's Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar, p. 85, and Edvard Radzinsky's Stalin, pp. 259-63. Primary source: K. Zelinsky's contemporary record of the event. It was published in English in Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia,. (1991) by А. Kemp-Welch, Basingstoke and London, pp. 12-31.
Contemporary witnesses

“True courage consists in being strong enough to master and overcome oneself and subordinate one’s will to the will of the collective, the will of the higher party body.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Quoted in The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom, Arthur M. Schesinger, New Brunswick: NJ, Transaction Publishers (1998) p. 56. First printed in 1949. Second Speech Delivered at the Presidium of the ECCI on the American Question (May 14, 1929)
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“The principle of the minority submitting to the majority, the principle of directing Party work from a centre, not infrequently gives rise to attacks on the part of wavering elements, to accusations of "bureaucracy," "formalism," etc. It scarcely needs proof that systematic work by the Party as one whole, and the directing of the struggle of the working class, would be impossible without putting these principles into effect. Leninism in questions of organisation is the unswerving application of these applications of these principles.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Source: The Foundations of Leninism, Ch.8

“You [Albanians] are a separate people, just like the Persians and the Arabs, who have the same religion as the Turks. Your ancestors existed before the Romans and the Turks. Religion has nothing to do with nationality and statehood… the question of religious beliefs must be kept well in mind, must be handled with great care, because the religious feelings of the people must not be offended. These feelings have been cultivated in the people for many centuries, and great patience is called for on this question, because the stand towards it is important for the compactness and unity of the people.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Said to Enver Hoxha, on their second meeting together in March-April 1949, as quoted in Hoxha's (1986) The Artful Albanian, (Chatto & Windus, London), ISBN 0701129700
Contemporary witnesses

“We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech "The Tasks of Economic Executives" (4 February 1931) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/TEE31.html Stalin said this in 1931, at the beginning of the rapid industrialization campaign. Ten years later, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews