“It was ironical that Communism (at least the Dictatorship of the proletariat) should first come to Russia - a nation which in economic matters was one of the least developed among all the countries in Europe. Furthermore, Communism came as a coup in Russia, not through any class struggle on the part of the workers. It came through the conspiratorial intrigue of V. I. Lenin, who was encouraged by the German High Command to go into Russia during the closing months of World War I and use a small, hard core of revolutionaries to seize the provisional government which had but recently forced the Tzar to abdicate and was at the moment representing the working class, as much as anyone else, in setting up a democratic constitution. Communism therefore did not come to Russia as the natural outcome of class struggle but like any other dictatorship - by the military might of a small minority.”

Waldersee in his diary, 15 October 1885, quoted in Scott A. Silverstone, From Hitler's Germany to Saddam's Iraq

from "The Social-Democratic View of the National Question", 1904 (aged 26) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1904/09/01.htm
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

Interview with The Morning Hustle, as quoted in The Daily Mail (2 March 2022) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10566331/Ukraine-country-Europe-Kamala-explains-Putins-invasion-laymens-terms.html
2022, March 2022

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 246

"Nature Is My God" - interview with Fred Matser in Resurgence No. 184 (September-October 1997) http://www.resurgence.org/resurgence/184/gorbachev.htm
Context: We have retreated from the perennial values. I don't think that we need any new values. The most important thing is to try to revive the universally known values from which we have retreated.
As a young man, I really took to heart the Communist ideals. A young soul certainly cannot reject things like justice and equality. These were the goals proclaimed by the Communists. But in reality that terrible Communist experiment brought about repression of human dignity. Violence was used in order to impose that model on society. In the name of Communism we abandoned basic human values. So when I came to power in Russia I started to restore those values; values of "openness" and freedom.

A Cake of Soap (1948)

"Сегодня система власти Путина и Россия — это одно и то же. Путин приучает мир к отвратительному для него, мира, факту существования сильной национальной России, «путинской России». Россия без Путина сегодня геополитически невозможна, это будет просто ничья территория. Все остальные детали стоит рассматривать в этом контексте."

Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution (1996)

Letter to General von Massow (31 January 1920), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 67-68.