In France, the leader of Jacobinism perished on the guillotine; with us, the change of leadership was achieved by means of arrest and banishment. The technique of the process is gentler, but its essence is the same.
Leon TrotskyWithout a correct strategy the victory is impossible. But even the most correct strategy cannot give the victory under unfavorable objective conditions.
Leon TrotskyAs for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the sacredness of human life.
Leon TrotskyOnly when the kulak refused to deliver grain to the State did [Joseph] Stalin, under the pressure of the Left Opposition, accomplish a sharp turn. Being the empiricist that he is, he moved, to the opposite extreme, and set as a task for two or three years the collectivization of all the peasantry, the liquidation of the kulaks as a class, and the compression of the Five Year Plan into four years.
Leon Trotsky