“In not more than a month's time terror will assume very violent forms, after the example of the great French Revolution; the guillotine… will be ready for our enemies… that remarkable invention of the French Revolution which makes man shorter by a head.”

—  Leon Trotsky

As quoted in The Cheka : Lenin's Political Police (1981) by George Leggett, p. 54

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 27, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In not more than a month's time terror will assume very violent forms, after the example of the great French Revolution…" by Leon Trotsky?
Leon Trotsky photo
Leon Trotsky106
Marxist revolutionary from Russia 1879–1940

Related quotes

James Monroe photo

“Our relation to Europe, is pretty much the same, as it was in the commencement of the French Revolution. Can we, in any form, take a bolder attitude in regard to it, in favor of liberty, than we then did? Can we afford greater aid to that cause, by assuming any such attitude, than we do now, by the form of our example?”

James Monroe (1758–1831) American politician, 5th President of the United States (in office from 1817 to 1825)

Letter to Thomas Jefferson (1822)

“The "Terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

Bernard Lewis photo

“The Iranian revolution was a real revolution, not just a coup d'etat or a putsch or whatever. It was a genuine revolution in the sense that the French and the Russian revolutions were revolutions. It brought a massive change, social, economic, ideological not just a change of regime. Like for the French and Russian revolutions in their day, Khomeini had had a tremendous impact everywhere they had a shared universe of discourse, that is to say, the Muslim world. Just as the French and Russian revolutions in their day, and for some time after, had such an impact, so did the Iranian revolution, and it was not limited to the Shi'a world.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

Jawaharlal Nehru photo

“But to understand the great drama of the Russian Revolution and the inner forces that shaped and brought the great change about, a study of cold theory is of little use. The October Revolution was undoubtedly one of the great events of world history, the greatest since the first French Revolution, and its story is more absorbing, from the human and the dramatic point of view, than any We or phantasy.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Soviet Russia: Some Random Sketches and Impressions (1949)

G. K. Chesterton photo

“All revolutions are doctrinal — such as the French one, or the one that introduced Christianity.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Napoleon of Notting Hill

The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

Eric Hobsbawm photo

“In terms of political geography, The French Revolution ended the European Middle Ages.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

Source: The Age of Revolution (1962), Chapter 4, War

“If you can't have a revolution without Jacobinism, then it becomes a matter of how to have reform without revolution. Anyone who "accepts the necessity of Jacobinism" wants to try his hand at it. When François Furet hinted at this conclusion in his truly revolutionary book on the French Revolution, he found himself immediately tagged by the left as a diehard spokesman of the reactionary right. It was assumed that if he was against the Terror, he was against the people. His contention that the Terror had been against the people was not accepted.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Edgar Quinet', p. 587
Essays and reviews, Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

John F. Kennedy photo

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Address to Latin American diplomats at the White House (13 March 1962) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9100&amp;st=&amp;st1= <br class="br">1962

William S. Burroughs photo

“Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words.”

William S. Burroughs book Cities of the Red Night

Cities of the Red Night (1981)

Vladimir Lenin photo

“Notwithstanding all the differences in the aims and tasks of the Russian revolution, compared with the French revolution of 1871, the Russian proletariat had to resort to the same method of struggle as that first used by the Paris Commune — civil war. Mindful of the lessons of the Commune, it knew that the proletariat should not ignore peaceful methods of struggle — they serve its ordinary, day-to-day interests, they are necessary in periods of preparation for revolution — but it must never forget that in certain conditions the class struggle assumes the form of armed conflict and civil war; there are times when the interests of the proletariat call for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

“Lessons of the Commune”, in Zagranichnaya Gazeta, No. 2 (23 March 1908) http://www.marx.org/archive/lenin/works/1908/mar/23.htm, as translated by Bernard Isaacs, Collected Works, Vol. 13, p. 478. <br class="br">1900s <br class="br">Variant: The proletariat should not ignore peaceful methods of struggle — they serve its ordinary, day-to-day interests, they are necessary in periods of preparation for revolution — but it must never forget that in certain conditions the class struggle assumes the form of armed conflict and civil war; there are times when the interests of the proletariat call for ruthless extermination of its enemies in open armed clashes. This was first demonstrated by the French proletariat in the Commune and brilliantly confirmed by the Russian proletariat in the December uprising.

Related topics