ministers-of-russia-and-the-soviet-union

"No ideal can spring from a soil or seed alien to it; the methods and weapons used for its attainment must be in harmony with itself. Therefore from the struggling proletariat we must not expect the splendour of the harvest and the perfection of form and unfettered grace of victorious strength. These will reveal themselves in the future. Nevertheless, we have every reason to expect that proletarian culture, because of its struggle, its toil, and suffering, will possess characteristics which would probably be unthinkable in the social order of a triumphant Socialism."

"Lenin was transformed. I was deeply impressed by that concentrated energy with which he spoke, by those piercing eyes of his which grew almost sombre as they bored gimlet-like into the audience, by the orator’s monotonous but compelling movements, by that fluent diction so redolent of will-power. I realized that as a tribune this man was destined to make a powerful and ineradicable mark. And I already knew the extent of Lenin’s strength as a publicist – his unpolished but extraordinarily clear style, his ability to present any idea, however complicated, in astonishingly simple form and to modify it in such a way that it would ultimately be engraved upon any mind, however dull and however unaccustomed to political thinking. Only later, much later, did I come to see that Lenin’s greatest gifts were not those of a tribune or a publicist, not even those of a thinker, but even in those early days it was obvious to me that the dominating trait of his character, the feature which constituted half his make-up, was his will: an extremely firm, extremely forceful will capable of concentrating itself on the most immediate task but which yet never strayed beyond the radius traced out by his powerful intellect and which assigned every individual problem its place as a link in a huge, world-wide political chain."

"The man was like a diamond, chosen for its absolute hardness to be the axis of some delicate, perpetually revolving piece of mechanism. The man was like ice; the man was like a diamond. His moral nature, too, had a similar quality that was crystalline, cold and spiky. He was transparently free of personal ambition or any form of personal calculation to such a degree that he was somehow faceless. Nor had he any ideas. He had orthodox ideas about everything, but he was only a reflection of the general will, of general Party directives. He never originated anything but merely transmitted what he received from the Central Committee, sometimes from Lenin personally. He transmitted them, of course, clearly and well, adapting them to each concrete situation. When he spoke in public his speeches always bore an official stamp, like leading articles in an official gazette. Everything was carefully thought out; he said what was needed and no more. No sentimentality. No intellectual fireworks."

"In essence, the Intelligentsia is, as a whole, petite bourgeois. But at the same time, it is the bearer of special functions in society--it is the organ and servitor of social knowledge and consciousness. For, in the words of Lassalle, the union of science and the fourth estate is a most natural phenomenon. A real artist must be sensitive to truth, to the beauty of heroism and of the will to freedom. The teacher, the true teacher, must first of all be with the masses in all their experiences and through all their wanderings."

"Zinoviev has always acted as Lenin’s faithful henchman and has followed him everywhere. The Mensheviks have affected a slightly scornful attitude to Zinoviev for being just such a dedicated henchman. Perhaps we Forwardists were also slightly infected by this attitude. We knew that Zinoviev was an excellent Party worker, but we knew little of him as a political thinker and we too often used to say of him that he followed Lenin as the thread follows a needle."

"Trotsky's most obvious gifts were his talents as an orator and as a writer. I regard Trotsky as probably the greatest orator of our age. ... His impressive appearance, his handsome, sweeping gestures, the powerful rhythm of his speech, his loud but never fatiguing voice, the remarkable coherence and literary skill of his phrasing, the richness of imagery, scalding irony, his soaring pathos, his rigid logic, clear as polished steel: those are Trotsky’s virtues as a speaker."

"Since we are no prophets, none of us can say exactly how many months or years will pass before the victory of the proletarian revolution in the first of those important countries which really determine the fate of the World Revolution. One thing, however, we know exactly, and the new analysis of Europe’s economic situation at the Third Congress has again completely convinced us of it: The revolution is not over. We are not very far distant from the period in which new conflicts will begin, which will shake Europe and the whole world in a much greater degree than the sum total of all previous struggles."

"The governmental machine of the bourgeoisie, consequently also the bourgeois parliaments, are to be broken, disrupted, destroyed, and upon their ruins is to be organized a new power, the power of the union of the working class, the workers' 'parliaments,' i.e., the Soviets. Only the betrayers of the workers can deceive the workers with the hope of a 'peaceful' social revolution, along the lines of parliamentary reforms. Such persons are the worst enemies of the working class, and a most pitiless struggle must be waged against them; no compromise with them is permissible. Therefore, our slogan for any bourgeois country you may choose is: 'Down with Parliament! Long live Soviet power!'"

"The population of the colonies means nothing but beasts of burden to the gentlemen imperialists. ... The imperialists of all countries treat the peoples who are the objects of their imperialist exploitation as slaves. Naturally the slaves rebel against their tormentors and naturally the strivings of these peoples for freedom and independence become stronger the more often they have the opportunity to conduct a war of defense against their oppressors. The socialists must recognize these wars of the colonial peoples against their European imperialist rulers as just wars of defense."

"Take a walk through the streets and market places of Petrograd and you can really see that every stone is a piece of Russian revolutionary history."

"The articulation of universalism with the sense of Jewish identity took varying forms depending on the different revolutionary currents: for internationalists such as Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Karl Radek and Rosa Luxemburg, the assimilation of a Jewish revolutionary into the concrete universal party, the dissolution of the 'little difference' into the status of equality of the militant, anticipated the society for which they fought; they did not consider the little difference' as called on to crystallize one day in terms of national identity. Were they blind? Blinkered, certainly, in the sense that they underestimated the national dimension of the Jewish problem in Eastern Europe."

"There is no greater honor than membership in the Communist Party. There is nothing more precious, there can be nothing more precious to us than our party, the splendid organization that has already helped the workers so materially in their hard fight for complete emancipation and that stands ready to help them until the fight is carried to a successful conclusion."

"We were indeed splitters at the beginning of the work of the Communist International. We could not have done otherwise. We were obliged to split the old socialist parties, to save the best revolutionary elements of the working class and to form a rallying point tor the new Communist Party in every country. For a time, we had to come out as splitters, but not one of us regrets it. ... But now, after the passing of two to three years, when we have firmly established our parties everywhere, we must go to the masses and work in such a manner that the simplest worker will understand us. The split for us was no end, but a means to win over the masses, and in my opinion is already half achieved. The masses begin to show a new attitude. They are now forced to see that the split was no selfish aim on our part, and that we are those who call and work for the unity of the revolutionary masses on one platform."

"An atmosphere of extreme tension reigned during this period; it was necessary to act without mercy. I think that it was justified. If Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Rykov and Zinoviev had started up their opposition in wartime, there would have been an extremely difficult struggle; the number of victims would have been colossal. Colossal. The two sides would have been condemned to disaster. They had links that went right up to Hitler. That far. Trotsky had similar links, without doubt. Hitler was an adventurist, as was Trotsky, they had traits in common. And the rightists, Bukharin and Rykov, had links with them. And, of course, many of the military leaders."

"It was a great privilege to work so closely with these wonderful women of our movement...One of the greatest privileges of all was meeting Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin's wife, one of the most selflessly devoted human beings I have ever known. She always worked closely with Lenin, helping him in all his problems, and was technical secretary of the Party's Central Committee during their days of exile, a task which involved the handling of voluminous correspondence under conspiratorial conditions, and the most exacting labor with codes. Originally a teacher, her greatest interest was always in education, and her early work in the revolutionary movement had been organizing workers' study circles. As Vice Commissar of Education, she was in charge of adult education in the U.S.S.R. She told me of the immense problem of overcoming the illiteracy inherited from the tsarist regime. On my later visits she always sent for me to ask me for ideas from America which might be useful to the Soviet educational system."

"...We should try to link our personal lives with the cause for which we struggle, with the cause of building communism...This, of course, does not mean that we should renounce our personal life. The Party of communism is not a sect, and so such asceticism should not be advocated. At a factory, I once heard a woman addressing her work-mates say: "Comrades working women, you should remember that once you join the Party you have to give up husband and children." Of course, this is not the approach to the question. It is not a matter of neglecting husband and children, but of training the children to become fighters for communism, to arrange things so that the husband becomes such a fighter, too. One has to know how to merge one's life with the life of society. This is not asceticism. On the contrary, the fact of this merging, the fact that the common cause of all working people becomes a personal matter, makes personal life richer. It does not become poorer, it offers deep and colourful experiences which humdrum family life has never provided. To know how to merge one's life with work for communism, with the work and struggle of the working people to build communism, is one of the tasks that face us. You, young people, are only just starting out on your lives, and you can build them so that there is no gap between your personal life and that of society..."

"Not everyone can learn from life, from other people."

"The bourgeoisie of all countries understands to a nicety what a great power the experiences of childhood have over people, and for this reason it endeavours to bring the children up in the bourgeois spirit from their earliest years. The clergy, the teachers servile to the bourgeois Government, the unprincipled penny-a-line children’s authors and the grasping cinema proprietors all work feverishly in this direction."

"...The woman today is not simply a man's wife, she is a social worker, she wants to educate her children in the new way, she wants her whole day-to-day life to be rearranged of new lines. At every step she feels she lacks knowledge."

"The girls must not be tied down to the home, but from the early years should be accustomed to being together, in one organisation with the boys—to be with them on a comradely footing."

"He who looks with indifference on life all round him "from the writer's carriage window" will never become a real writer...There is often a great deal of snobbish conceit in budding writers--and even frequently in workers' children, but [it] has to be thoroughly washed away."

"The activity of the NATO’s "police" aviation mission on patrolling the Baltic states’ airspace has actually become a part of the so-called limited access zone, covering the Kaliningrad region and the eastern part of the Baltic Sea. We consider such activities of the NATO as a violation of the power balance in the region, endangering the Russian Federation security."

"Victory, like the New Year, is inevitable."

"Losses of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation - 5937 people."

"We firmly believe that elimination of the ISIS in Syria is possible only by the joint efforts of all countries."

"I would not speak about Ukraine as a threat. I think that Ukraine and the Ukrainian people is a brotherly nation. They are not just our neighbors, we are a single people."

"We were lucky in that, we still managed to stop [the West] in time. The process of returning to common sense… began in 1999. Starting from that moment, by putting a lot of effort, we have achieved that the world today has ceased to be unipolar."

"The main goal for us is to protect the Russian Federation from the military threat posed by Western countries that are trying to use the Ukrainian people in the fight against our country."

"We do not exclude the possibility of closer Russian-American coordination in fight against the ISIS and creation of additional communication channels for rapid resolution of crisis situations."

"After everything Germany has done to our country, I think, they should not talk on the issue for another two hundred years. Ask your grandparents about their experience of talking to Russia from the position of strength. They will probably be able to tell you."

"The greatest focus should be on fighting international terrorism, which in short time became the largest threat to global security. The situation is compounded by the numerous local conflicts in the world and the failure of the West to overcome differences and to ensure the creation of a United front against this evil."

"Today we are at war not only with Ukraine and the Ukrainian army, but with the collective West."

"The joint dialogue between the foreign policy and defenсe departments of Russia and Japan makes a serious contribution to creating an atmosphere of mutual trust and security in the Pacific Rim."

"I would like to emphasize that Russia's actions for strengthening the defence are the balanced response to the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance, the development of military infrastructure in the bordering countries, and the deployment of additional military contingents. NATO is a military-political coalition but not a group of philatelists."

"A total of 300,000 reservists will be called up during partial mobilization."

"Ukraine lost half of the army: 61,207 dead, 49,368 wounded."

"They say that we are engaged in the militarization of the country, so that everyone would walk in formation there. This, of course, is far from the case."

"What is on Britain’s] coat of arms, a lion, isn’t it? There is an old saying: every lion is a cat, but not every cat is a lion. Everyone should deal with their affairs. We do not think that there is an animal in their zoo that can tell a bear what to do."

"We have achieved a high level of interaction between our armed forces on land, in the air and at sea. This increase is an important trend towards further activity."

"After everything that happened in Syria, we were those who established peace in Syria, from those who had the main influence on the situation in this country, defeated terrorism, starting an operation when Damascus controlled that 18 per cent of Syrian territory, and today in fact more than 90 per cent, then, naturally, they [the West] began to say that "Russia is behaving somehow wrong in Syria.""

"The meaning of what is happening, from my point of view, is as follows: patterns and algorithms for overthrowing any legal authority in any country inconvenient for West, have long been created. Of course, all this is done under the banner of promoting democracy. Well, in which country where they 'came with democracy' did this democracy take root: in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya? Or in the former Yugoslavia, which they forcibly divided into 6 countries with their 'democratic' bombing in 1999. And you can simply forget about sovereignty and independence after any American intervention."

"Our strategic and long-range bombers have started to conduct flights to areas where they used to fly in the past. These flights are carried out according to schedule… How is it possible to bully your neighbors using strategic bombers?"

"During the special operation, we strictly adhere to the norms of humanitarian law. The strikes are carried out with high-precision weapons against the objects of the military infrastructure of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – control points, airfields, warehouses, fortified areas, objects of the military-industrial complex. At the same time, everything is done to avoid casualties among peaceful citizens, of course, it slows down the pace of the offensive, but we do it deliberately."

"Nasriddinova insists that we should eat Uzbek bread, in Crimea they think we are robbers and lazy people. Where should we go?! The moon?"

"I repeat, you will not go anywhere, we have a common homeland for the USSR. People live in Crimea, and there is no place for you there."

"We understand Comrade Y.S. Nasriddinova wants the Crimean Tatar people only as a labor force, without a national homeland and without national equality..."

"Crimean Tatars will not be returned to Crimea...You will live in Uzbekistan forever. There are decrees of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on this."

"The great October Revolution, which marked the beginning of the world proletarian revolution, was the decisive factor in the birth of the Communist International. The October Revolution utilised and extended the great experience of the Paris Commune, the revolution of 1905, and the revolution of February, 1917, began to put, into effect Marx’s slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and created a new type of state, the Soviet type of state."

"LIKE everything else in nature, Lenin was born, has developed, has grown. When Vladimir Ilyitch once observed me glancing through a collection of his articles, written in the year 1903, which had just been published, a sly smile crossed his face, and he remarked with a laugh: “It is very interesting to read what stupid fellows we were!""

"It is impossible to be a leader of the working class without knowing the whole history of the class. The leaders of the labour movement must know the history of the labour movement; without this knowledge there can be no leader, just as nowadays there can he no great general who could be victorious with the least expenditure of force unless he knew the history of strategy. The history of strategy is not a collection of recipes as to how to win a war, for a situation once described never repeats itself. But the mind of the general becomes practised in strategy by its express study; this study renders him elastic in war, permits him to observe the dangers and possibilities which the empirically trained general cannot see. The history of the labour movement does not tell us what to do, but it makes it possible to compare our position with situations which have already been experienced by our class, so that in various decisive moments we are enabled to see our path clearly, and to recognise approaching danger."