Joseph Stalin: Trending quotes (page 2)

“God is on your side? Is He a Conservative? The Devil's on my side, he's a good Communist.”

Joseph Stalin

Said to Winston Churchill in Tehran, November 1943, as quoted in Fallen Eagle: The Last Days of the Third Reich (1995) by Robin Cross, p. 21
Contemporary witnesses

God

“One of Ivan the Terrible's mistakes was to overlook the five great feudal families. If he had annihilated those five families, there would definitely have been no Time of Troubles. But Ivan the Terrible would execute someone and then spend a long time repenting and praying. God got in his way in this matter. He ought to have been still more decisive!”

Joseph Stalin

Moskovskie novosti, no. 32, 7 August 1988
Contemporary witnesses

God , Family , Way , Decision

“You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.”

Joseph Stalin

A teenaged Stalin to a fellow student while studying to become a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, as quoted in Landmarks in the Life of Stalin (1942) by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, p. 9
Contemporary witnesses

God , Fools

“Before your eyes rises the hero of Gogol's story who, in a fit of aberration, imagined that he was the King of Spain. Such is the fate of all megalomaniacs.”

Joseph Stalin

Proletariatis Brdzola August 1905, as quoted in Young Stalin (2007) by Simon Sebag Montefiore, p. 376
Contemporary witnesses

Fate , Imagination

“Bukharin's a swine and surely worse than a swine because he thinks it below his dignity to write a couple of lines.”

Joseph Stalin

Bol'shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska 1912-1927, [Bolshevik Leadership, Correspondence 1912-1927], p. 90
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Thinking , Swine

“Strikes, boycott, parliamentarism, meetings and demonstrations are all good forms of struggle as means for preparing and organising the proletariat. But not one of these means is capable of abolishing existing inequality. All these means must be concentrated in one principal and decisive means; the proletariat must rise and launch a determined attack upon the bourgeoisie in order to destroy capitalism to its foundations. This principal and decisive means is the socialist revolution.”

Joseph Stalin

Anarchism or Socialism (1906)

Decision

“e achievement and maintenance of the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible without a party which is strong by reason of its solidarity and iron discipline. But iron discipline in the Party is inconceivable without unity of will, without complete and absolute unity of action on the part of all members of the Party. This does not mean, of course, that the possibility of conflicts of opinion within the Party is thereby precluded. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and conflict of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that discipline must be "blind." On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline. But after a conflict of opinion has been closed, after criticism has been exhausted and a decision has been arrived at, unity of will and unity of action of all Party members are the necessary conditions without which neither Party unity nor iron discipline in the Party is conceivable.”

Joseph Stalin

Source: The Foundations of Leninism, Ch.8

Decision , Strong , Parting

“I have no son named Yakov.”

Joseph Stalin

as quoted in Joseph Stalin: Dictator of the Soviet Union (2006) by Brenda Haugen, p. 11
Contemporary witnesses

“Why did you beat me so hard?”

Joseph Stalin

to his mother in her later years. Her response was "That's why you turned out so well". Source: Edvard Radzinsky, p. 32
Contemporary witnesses

“Life has improved, comrades. Life has become more joyous.”

Joseph Stalin

In Russian: Жить стало лучше, товарищи. Жить стало веселее.
Speech at the Conference of Stakhanovites http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/SCS35.html (17 November 1935)
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Life

“Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period (we have the proletarian revolution in mind), when developed imperialism did not yet exist, in the period of the proletarians' preparation for revolution, in the period when the proletarian revolution was not yet an immediate practical inevitability. But Lenin, the disciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in the period of developed imperialism, in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets.”

Joseph Stalin

The Foundations of Leninism

Democracy , Country

“[The Albanians] seem to be rather backward and primitive people… they can be as faithful as a dog; that is one of the traits of the primitive. Our Chuvash were the same. The Russian tsars always used them for their bodyguards.”

Joseph Stalin

Said to Edvard Kardelj (1947), as quoted in Vladimir Dedijer (1954), Tito Speaks, page 312
Contemporary witnesses

People , Faith , Dogs

“Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx’s proletarian socialism logically follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism.”

Joseph Stalin

Anarchism or Socialism (1906)

World

“In my opinion there are two seats of war danger. The first is in the Far East, in the zone of Japan. I have in mind the numerous statements made by Japanese military men containing threats against other powers. The second seat is in the zone of Germany. It is hard to say which is the most menacing, but both exist and are active. Compared with these two principal seats of war danger, the Italian-Abyssinian war is an episode. At present, the Far Eastern seat of danger reveals the greatest activity. However, the centre of this danger may shift to Europe. This is indicated, for example, by the interview which Herr Hitler recently gave to a French newspaper. In this interview Hitler seems to have tried to say peaceful things, but he sprinkled his "peacefulness" so plentifully with threats against both France and the Soviet Union that nothing remained of his "peacefulness."”

Joseph Stalin

You see, even when Herr Hitler wants to speak of peace he cannot avoid uttering threats. This is symptomatic.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/03/01.htmInterview Between J. Stalin and Roy Howard; March 1, 1936
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Men , War , Peace

“God's not unjust, he doesn't actually exist. We've been deceived. If God existed, he'd have made the world more just… I'll lend you a book and you'll see.”

Joseph Stalin

A teenaged Stalin after reading The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin as quoted in Young Stalin (2007) by Simon Sebag Montefiore, p. 49
Contemporary witnesses

God , Books , World

“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

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

People , Communication , Country

“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

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

Time

“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

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

Strong , Victory , Painting

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

Joseph Stalin

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

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

Women , Men , War , People