“There were nowhere more docile disciples of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin than the Nazis were.”

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

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Ludwig von Mises62

austrian economist 1881–1973

Aleksandr Zinovyev (1922–2006) Russian writer

Katastroika (1988)

“The main target of Trotsky's attacks, therefore, was not Stalin but the Bolshevik Party. It was revolutionary Bolshevism - Leninism - that was under attack.”

Harpal Brar (1939) British politician

Harpal Brar, Trotskyism or Leninism?, pg. 90.
Context: It is in this context that Trotsky's attack on Stalin must be understood. Trotsky's attack on Stalin was not directed against Stalin as an individual but against someone who during the course of struggle had emerged as the most representative spokesman of the Bolshevik Party which was upholding, defending, and applying Leninism. The main target of Trotsky's attacks, therefore, was not Stalin but the Bolshevik Party. It was revolutionary Bolshevism - Leninism - that was under attack. It was an attack on the metodhs and forms of organisation of the Bolshevik Party - an attack on the fundamental Leninist policies pursued by the Party.

“Possibly 20,000,000 were killed in the war against the Nazis and from Nazi occupation, but many more millions were killed in Stalin’s simultaneous war on his own people.”

Rudolph Rummel book Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917

Source: Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 (1990), p. 152

“Lenin, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered even more tens of millions in the name of equality than Hitler murdered in the name of inequality.”

Steve Sailer (1958) American journalist and movie critic

The Coming War over Genes: Darwin's Enemies on the Left http://www.isteve.com/Darwin-EnemiesonLeft.htm, by Steve Sailer, National Post, December 1, 1999

“By 1921 it had become clear to all but the more incorrigible optimists that there would be no repetition of October 1917 anywhere else and that for an indeterminate period the revolution would remain confined to Russia and her possessions. The concept of ‘socialism in one country’ was not launched by Stalin in his conflict with Trotsky, but earlier by Lenin himself.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution (1995), p. 72

“As Commissar for the Armed Forces and a member of the Politburo he [Trotsky] still appeared powerful, but by 1923 he was isolated and helpless. All his former tergiversations were turned against him. When he came to realize his situation he attacked the bureaucratization of the party and the stifling of intra-party democracy: like all overthrown Communist leaders he became a democrat as soon as he was ousted from power. However, it was easy for Stalin and Zinovyev to show not only that Trotsky’ s democratic sentiments and indignation at party bureaucracy were of recent date, but that he himself, when in power, had been a more extreme autocrat than anyone else: he had supported or initiated every move to protect party "unity", had wanted – contrary to Lenin’ s policy – to place the trade unions under state control and to subject the whole economy to the coercive power of the police, and so on. In later years Trotsky claimed that the policy, which he had supported, of prohibiting "fractions" was envisaged as an exceptional measure and not a permanent principle. But there is no proof that this was so, and nothing in the policy itself suggests that it was meant to be temporary. It may be noted that Zinovyev showed more zeal than Stalin in condemning Trotsky – at one stage he was in favour of arresting him – and thus supplied Stalin with useful ammunition when the two ousted leaders tried, belatedly and hopelessly, to join forces against their triumphant rival.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 21
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

“Hitler did a better job than Stalin of accomplishing Lenin’s totalitarian promises—better, too, than Mussolini,…”

François Furet (1927–1997) French historian

Source: The Passing of an Illusion, The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1999), p. 205

“The odd thing is, despite The Permanent Revolution being on the bookshelves, they would explain everything by going back and finding a quote from Trotsky or from Lenin in order to explain things, as opposed to explaining how things were in the real world.”

Henry Spira (1927–1998) American activist

Context: It was very dispiriting because a lot of things needed to be done. One of the things that happened was, if you had a good rank-and-file activist in a trade union situation, they would make them an offer to become part of the staff—at which point the person was totally lost to the campaign where they were a catalyst and became part of an apparatus that was basically going nowhere. The odd thing is, despite The Permanent Revolution being on the bookshelves, they would explain everything by going back and finding a quote from Trotsky or from Lenin in order to explain things, as opposed to explaining how things were in the real world.... They were basically just living in their own universe as opposed to making real life connections.

“In Mussolini's Italy of the nineteen-thirties, when it meant long terms of improsonment, and perhaps torture or even death, to be in any way connected with the Communist Party, and when not only all the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, but the works of all Italian and foreign democrats and progressive were strictly banned from Italian libraries and bookshops, the works of Trotsky, on the "new kind of communism" were "freely" and widely translated and distributed. I remember vividly how in 1938, passing through Italy on the way to meet the anti-fascist and Communist students of Belgrade University, and spending a few hours in Mussolini's Milan, the word "communism" caught my eye on a number of books prominently displayed in a bookshop window. They were the newly translated works of Trotsky.”

James Klugmann (1912–1977) British writer

From Trotsky to Tito (1951)

“What Marxism, Leninism and Stalinism failed to accomplish, we shall be in a position to achieve.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: Disputed, Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (1978), p. 149

“There were nowhere more docile disciples of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin than the Nazis were.”

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Ludwig von Mises62

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