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.

If we had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

Revolutionary realism tries to draw the maximum advantage from every situation - that is what makes it revolutionary - but at the same time it does not permit us to set ourselves fantastic aims - that is what makes it realistic.

I wrote a study about this question, The Lessons of October, which served as a pretext for my elimination from the government.

No one revolution up to now has brought all that was expected of it by the masses. Hence the inevitability of a certain disillusionment, of a lowering of the activity of the vanguard, and consequently, of the growing importance of the rearguard. [Joseph] Stalin's faction has raised itself on the wave of reaction against the October revolution.

There is no justice in bureaucracy for the individual, for bureaucracy caters only to itself. One cannot practice the same bureaucracy as one is fighting against.

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.