Our differences with [Joseph] Stalin are entirely of a strategical character.

Actually, the decision was not only expedient but necessary. The severity of this summary justice showed the world that we would continue to fight mercilessly, stopping at nothing. The execution of the Tsar's family was needed not only in order to frighten, horrify, and dishearten the enemy but also in order to shake up our own ranks, to show them that there was no turning back, that ahead lay either complete victory or complete ruin.

Our planet is being turned into a filthy and evil-smelling imperialist barrack.

Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.

Yet the proletariat has not only a vanguard, but also a rearguard, and besides the proletariat there are the peasantry and the bureaucracy.

All the parties of capitalist society, all its moralists and all its sycophants will perish beneath the debris of the impending catastrophe. The only party that will survive is the party of the world socialist revolution.

That the existence of the Soviet Union has an international revolutionary significance is a commonplace equally recognized by friends and foes.