“Marxism and Bolshevism, its offspring, were products of an era in European intellectual life that was obsessed with violence. No-one embraced this philosophy more enthusiastically than the Bolsheviks: ‘merciless’ violence, violence that strove for the destruction of every actual and potential opponent, was… the only way of dealing with problems.”

Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 500

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Richard Pipes 46
American historian 1923–2018

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