Leon Trotsky - History of the Russian Revolution (1932)

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Insurrection is an art, and like all arts has its own laws.

Leon Trotsky
The slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into consideration the setting - the war and the revolution - and the character of the accused - revolutionary leaders of millions who were conducting their party to the sovereign power - you can say without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history.

Leon Trotsky
From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.

Leon Trotsky
Civilization has made the peasantry its pack animal. The bourgeoisie in the long run only changed the form of the pack.

Leon Trotsky
You [the Mensheviks] are pitiful isolated individuals; you are bankrupts; your role is played out. Go where you belong from now on—into the dustbin of history!

Leon Trotsky
There is no example in history of a revolutionary movement involving such gigantic masses being so bloodless.

Leon Trotsky
The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.

Leon Trotsky
The boycott of parliamentary institutions on the part of anarchists and semianarchists is dictated by a desire not to submit their weakness to a test on the part of the masses, thus preserving their right to an inactive hauteur which makes no difference to anybody. A revolutionary party can turn its back to a parliament only if it has set itself the immediate task of overthrowing the existing regime.

Leon Trotsky
Let us not forget that revolutions are accomplished through people, although they be nameless. Materialism does not ignore the feeling, thinking, and acting man, but explains him.

Leon Trotsky