Modern History Quotes Y12

Tsar Nicolas quote regarding his right to rule

I am not prepared to be a tsar. I never wanted to become one. I know nothing of the business of ruling.

Tsar Nicolas quote regarding the autocracy

I will preserve the principle of autocracy as firmly and unswervingly as my late father.

Trotsky quote regarding the cause of the February Revolution

Conscious and tempered workers educated … by the party of Lenin.

William Henry Chamberlain quote regarding the cause of the February Revolution

one of the most leaderless, spontaneous, anonymous revolutions of all time.

George Kennan quote stating that Tsarism couldn’t have survived

None of [Russia’s various] deficiencies were in the process of correction as the war approached.

Lenin quote regarding his support of worker and peasant anarchy

You are the power - do all you want to do, take all you want.

Sheila Fitzpatrick quote regarding the Kronstadt Revolt

… the worst blow to the new regime …

Lenin quote regarding the Kronstadt Revolt

This was the flash which lit up reality more than anything else.

Lenin quote regarding Stalin’s power

I am not sure that he always knows how to [act] … with sufficient caution.

John Westwood quote regarding Stalin’s rise to power

he [stood] back and watch[ed[ his rivals dig their own graves, occasionally offering his spade to one or another of them.

Isaac Deutscher quote regarding Trotsky’s fall from power

No contemporary, and [Trotsky] least of all, saw in the Stalin of 1923 the menacing and towering figure he was to become.

Bukharin quote regarding Stalin’s ideology (1928)

he changes his theories according to whom he needs to get rid of next.

Stalin quote, writing in Pravda regarding industrialisation in 1931

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or we shall be crushed.

Quote by German Diplomat Gustav Hilger regarding Russia

Russians aren’t used to anything but suffering and hardship.

Christopher Ward quote regarding the Five Year Plans

there were some dramatic advances … the Soviet economy was fundamentally transformed.

Walter Duranty quote regarding the Five Year Plans

Men … are left to die in order that the Five Year Plan shall at least succeed on paper.

Extract from the Ryutin platform

the evil genius of the revolution

Quote from an NKVD member regarding execution quotas

he said ‘80,000 … we overfulfilled our plan.’

Robert Conquest quote regarding Stalin’s reasoning behind the purges

It led him to absolute power.

Roberta Manning quote regarding the reasons behind the Great Terror

The economic problems of 1936-41 and the Great Purges appear to be … linked

John Steinbeck quote regarding the omnipresence of Stalin

[Stalin’s] portrait does not just hang in every museum but in a museum’s every room.

Beryl Williams quote regarding the state of women’s equality in the inter-war years

It was a macho world for all the talk of equality.

Lenin quote regarding the attacks on the Orthodox Church

The greater the number of the reactionary clergy we will manage to execute, the better.

Shulgin quote regarding his opinions on education

An awful fart, a fart of the past.

Meyerhold quote regarding the state of Soviet cinema

Boring productions which differ only in their degree of worthlessness.