Is it possible to fulfill this task, is it possible to achieve the definite victory of Socialism in one country without the combined efforts of the proletarians of several advanced countries? No, it is impossible.

Against my protests a mausoleum was built on the Red Square, a monument unbecoming and offensive to the revolutionary consciousness.

In 1917 there was not a single Bolshevik who considered possible the realization of a socialist society in a single country, and least of all in Russia.

In Russia itself the proletariat conquered in spite of the fact that there was no Soviet State in existence at the time elsewhere. For the victory are necessary, not only certain objective conditions, internal as well as external, but also certain subjective factors - the Party, the leadership, the strategy.

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

What shall we call an "immediate possibility"? In 1923 the situation in Germany was profoundly revolutionary, but what was lacking for a victorious revolution was a correct strategy.

Only 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.