Can and must! The proclamation of this new conception of [Joseph Stalin] is closed by the same words, "Such are in general the characteristic features of Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution." In the course of a single year Stalin ascribed to [Vladimir] Lenin two directly opposed conceptions of the fundamental question of socialism. The first version represents the real tradition of the party; the second took shape in Stalin's mind only after the death of Lenin, in the course of the struggle against "Trotskyism".

Root out the counterrevolutionaries without mercy, lock up suspicious characters in concentration camps... Shirkers will be shot, regardless of past service.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

‎The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.

If the Revolution has the right to destroy bridges and art monuments whenever necessary, it will stop still less from laying its hand on any tendency in art which, no matter how great its achievement in form, threatens to disintegrate the revolutionary environment or to arouse the internal forces of the Revolution, that is, the proletariat, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, to a hostile opposition to one another. Our standard is, clearly, political, imperative and intolerant.

From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.

Religions are illogical primitive ignorance. There is nothing as ridiculous and tragic as a religious government.