LEON TROTSKY

It can't work—for Lenin and Trotsky are both extremely unpopular.... Lenin ... will never be able to dominate the Russian people.

The capitalists—all kinds—fear and hate even his dead body! The doors of our great democracy are open to many political refugees, of course. All sorts of reactionaries; democratic scoundrels who betrayed and deserted their people; monarchists, and even fascists—they have all been welcomed in New York harbor. But not even the dead body of the friend of the oppressed could find asylum here!

The regime of bureaucratic strangulation, which expels its outspoken opponents and bludgeons the party into silence, has become an international phenomenon of the period …. A real struggle against it cannot be made without an understanding of its international scope. On this, as well as on the other principled questions, the fight of the proletarian Communist elements in all parties unites with the Bolshevik fight of the Russian Opposition under the leadership of Trotsky.

They killed Trotsky not by one blow; not when this murderer, the agent of Stalin, drove the pickax through the back of his skull. That was only the final blow. They killed him by inches. They killed him many times. They killed him seven times when they killed his seven secretaries. They killed him four times when they killed his four children. They killed him when his old coworkers of the Russian Revolution were killed …. Stalin and his traitor gang were consumed by a mad hatred of the man who reminded them of their yesterday. Trotsky, the symbol of the great revolution, reminded them constantly of the cause they had deserted and betrayed, and they hated him for that. They hated him for all the great and good human qualities which he personified and to which they were completely alien. They were determined, at all cost, to do away with him.

Not Guilty

I used to spend time in my great grandfather’s [Leon Trotsky’s] study. My relatives used to tell me stories about all the meetings with writers, painters, intellectuals, about the relationship between Leon and Natalya and his friendship with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and her sister Cristina. We grew up surrounded by an atmosphere of support and love. Our parents instilled in us social compromise, sensitiveness and a sense of respect for others

His [Leon Trotsky’s] colossal arrogance and an inability or unwillingness to show any human kindness or to be attentive to people, the absence of that charm which always surrounded Lenin, condemned Trotsky to a certain loneliness. One only has to recall that even a number of his personal friends (I am speaking, of course, of the political sphere) turned into his sworn enemies

The theory of the permanent revolution, in contradiction to the theory of socialism in one country, was recognized by the entire Bolshevik party during the period from 1917 to 1923.

You may not like to go to war, but war will come to you.

A means can be justified only by its end. But the end in its turn needs to be justified.

Fascism is nothing but capitalist reaction.

Only the defeat of the proletariat in Germany in 1923 gave the decisive push to the creation of Stalin's theory of national socialism: the downward curve of the revolution gave rise to Stalinism, not to the theory of the permanent revolution, which was first formulated by me in 1905. This theory is not bound to a definite calendar of revolutionary events; it only reveals the world-wide interdependence of the revolutionary process.

Violence is a holy and historically progressive force.

Without a correct strategy the victory is impossible. But even the most correct strategy cannot give the victory under unfavorable objective conditions.

We are revolutionists from head to foot; revolutionists we were; revolutionists we are; revolutionists we shall remain until the very end.

[Russian] Prices for manufactured goods are from two to three times higher [than the world prices]…. our industry is not commercially profitable. At the same time, every private small industry or merchant, notwithstanding the very unfavorable conditions under which he works within the Soviet system, continues to operate and succeeds in making a profit.

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime. Only the guiding layers of a class have a political program, and even this still requires the test of events and the approval of the masses.