That the existence of the Soviet Union has an international revolutionary significance is a commonplace equally recognized by friends and foes.
Leon TrotskyThe slanders poured down like Niagara. If you take into consideration the setting - the war and the revolution - and the character of the accused - revolutionary leaders of millions who were conducting their party to the sovereign power - you can say without exaggeration that July 1917 was the month of the most gigantic slander in world history.
Leon TrotskyThe Left Opposition declared that the new tempo of industrialization were above our forces, and that the liquidation of the kulaks as a class in the course of three years was a fantastic task, if one wishes to say so, we find ourselves this time "less radical" than the Stalinists.
Leon Trotsky