Classic quotes and their meanings

[daft punk]

ok any good quotes stick them here and argue about them.


here is my starter


"All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the president of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military-Revolutionary Committee was organized. The principal assistants of Comrade Trotsky were Comrades Antonov and Podvoisky." Stalin, Telegram to Lenin.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1918/11/06.htm

For some odd reason Stalin accidentally missed this out of later Russian editions of his book.

The last complete English translation of this article was published 1936 by Lawrence and Wishart in the book The October Revolution

Later of course Stalin accused Trotsky of being a counter-revolutionary. I guess this paragraph could have been somewhat inconvenient.

[eyeheartlenin]

That's a tremendous quote; I never read it before. Thank you for that. As you probably know, there are lots of Stalin enthusiasts on revleft; I hope some of them, at least, see it. I wonder if Trotsky was ever aware of it.

Have you read Trotsky's My Life? As I remember, he writes about the sleepless period when he and Lenin were at the helm of the October Revolution. It's a very informative book; I wish there were a companion volume by him that covered the final decade of his life.

I will try to come up with some good quotes to contribute to this thread.

All the best,
ehl

[daft punk]

Cheers. I have plenty more! Yeah Trotsky was aware of it, he mentions it in his book the Stalin School of Falsification.

Oh, you're gonna love this. He quotes Stalin:


“Comrade Trotsky played no particular role in the party or the October insurrection and could not do so, being a man comparatively new to our party in the October period.”http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-devil05.gif (http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys.php) http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-devil10.gif (http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys.php)

Leon Trotsky

The Stalin School of Falsification

Letter to the Bureau of
Party History

(Part 1)

Concerning the Falsification of the History of the October Revolution, the History of the Revolution and the History of the Party


http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/ssf/sf04.htm

Yeah I read My Life years ago, very readable. Sometimes dip into it online for reference.

[daft punk]

Anton Yugoff, Bulgarian Stalinist Minister of Interior, in charge of the internal police(!), made clear to the capitalists that they had nothing to fear; their Stalinist watchdogs were on the job. He said:
“This government of which I am a member and on whose behalf I speak, categorically denies that it has any intention of establishing a Communist regime In Bulgaria. There is no truth in rumors that the government intends to nationalize any private enterprise in the country.”

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/fi/vol05/no10/editors.htm

As the Red Army began moving into the Balkans, Stalin again reassured the world capitalists: on September 20 the CBS picked up a broadcast from Moscow which declared: “The Soviet Union will not introduce Its order into other states and it does not change the existing order in them. All the acts of foreign policy pursued by the USSR have completely exposed the fascist slander of the Bolshevist bogey ...”

[getfiscal]

Here's a quote from Trotsky saying Nazis are revolutionary at heart.

"The German soldiers, that is, the workers and peasants, will in the majority of cases have far more sympathy for the vanquished peoples than for their own ruling caste. The necessity to act at every step in the capacity of 'pacifiers and oppressors will swiftly disintegrate the armies of occupation, infecting them with a revolutionary spirit." - From: Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40) - (NY: Merit Publishers, 1969), p. 113.

Good guess!

[GoddessCleoLover]

Seems like Lev Davidovich screwed the pooch with that guess. To be fair though, most observers were shocked by the manner in which the German military allowed itself to be complicit in the horrible crimes committed against the Jews and the Slavs in lands that came under Wehrmacht occupation. Trotsky was far from alone in pinning his hopes on the possibility that the German soldier might develop a revolutionary anti-Nazi spirit. Sadly, that did not happen to any significant degree.

[Thirsty Crow]

Here's a quote from Trotsky saying Nazis are revolutionary at heart.

"The German soldiers, that is, the workers and peasants, will in the majority of cases have far more sympathy for the vanquished peoples than for their own ruling caste. The necessity to act at every step in the capacity of 'pacifiers and oppressors will swiftly disintegrate the armies of occupation, infecting them with a revolutionary spirit." - From: Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40) - (NY: Merit Publishers, 1969), p. 113.

Good guess!
When phrased the way you did, one would think that old Leon has gone insane or worse yet, that he became a supporter of National Socialism (prosecutors' wet dream, to be sure). But it's kinda hard to see just how Trotsky is saying here that "nazis are revolutionary at heart".
First of all, he recognizes the class character of the army, or rather the class background of soldiers, and it is precisely the mistaken thought of immediate identification, based on common class position, with what he calles the vanquished which makes of the quote what it is, a ridiculously optimistic assessment of the potential for fraternization during the course of a bloodshed not witnessed til then in human history (which has its corrolary in the rich history of theorizations of revolutionary ferment breaking through, and to a great deal caused by war; something in which almost all of the currents to the left of social democracy participated, to a greater or lesser extent).

So, the real question concerns your own interest in providing such an interpretation, and I'd bet that it's the interest for trolling.

[getfiscal]

There's also a good quote about how Trotsky wanted to use a German invasion to stage a coup against Stalin. Fortunately there weren't many Trotskyists left in Moscow to carry out the murder!

[GoddessCleoLover]

Trotsky was far from alone in (mistakenly) believing that the German soldier would rise up against his Nazi overlords. Soviet propaganda was often aimed at encouraging precisely the result predicted by Trotsky, so in this instance his analysis was in line with that of the Soviet government and the Stalinist party.

[GoddessCleoLover]

The allegation that Trotsky desired a German invasion to provide cover for an anti-Soviet coup was invented by Stalin and his minions.

[getfiscal]

The allegation that Trotsky desired a German invasion to provide cover for an anti-Soviet coup was invented by Stalin and his minions.
Was Trotsky in on it?

"If I were threatened by an enemy and my eyes were blindfolded or my hand tied to my shoulder, I would say that the chief danger was – not the enemy, but the handicaps restricting my movements. It is a lie that the danger or even war itself excludes the self-action of the party, which discusses and decides all questions and which directs and checks all its organs from top to bottom. If as a result of our mistakes the enemy did appear within 80 kilometers of Moscow, then the self-action of the party would have to be ten times greater than under any other conditions. But the task right now is not to permit such a situation, to prevent it. This can be realized only by a living party, self-acting and completely alive. The first thing that follows from this is that there must be a change in the party régime."

Coded language for "we need Trotskyists to seize power in the event of an invasion" if there ever was.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Khrushchev and other witnesses said that in the wake of the German invasion Stalin half-expected to be deposed on account of the disastrous lack of proper preparation of Soviet military defenses. Although Trotsky's prediction was once again erroneous, his reasoning was logical and not so far-fetched. IMO the real historical Trotsky suffers from his reputation as a "prophet". Your quotes have substantiated the fact that Lev Trotsky was a human being, not a prophet, but even when Trotsky was wrong he was rarely foolish. I doubt that the Red Army would have been caught with its pant down, to quote the very phrase uttered by Iosif Vissarionovish had Trotsky still been People's Commissar for War.

[Zulu]

Khrushchev and other witnesses said that in the wake of the German invasion Stalin half-expected to be deposed on account of the disastrous lack of proper preparation of Soviet military defenses.

Khrushchev could not be a witness of that for he was in Kiev at the time. In his memoirs, he said that Beria told him that. So it may be Khrushchev's cunning libel upon both Stalin and Beria. However, this has been revealed as false, since Stalin's Kremlin visitors' log was declassified and showed that Stalin had worked for more than a week after the beginning of the Nazi invasion, sleeping no more than 3-4 hours a day right in his office. Only then did he leave for his summer residence to get some rest.

As for the OP, what's so difficult to understand? Yes, Trotsky was especially good at agitating people. He agitated a lot of people for the Soviets during the Revolution and the Civil War, but when the time came for the routine day-to-day work of building socialism, Comrades Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov, Kirov, Zhdanov, etc. turned to be the men up to the task, while Trotsky got left behind. So he was butthurt and continued to do what he did best: agitate people. This time against the Soviets.

As for rewriting history, well, that may not have been the most glorious idea ever, but not unheard of before or after Stalin.

Also, how about the version that with that telegram Stalin was framing Trotsky as the main perpetrator, just in case the uprising would fail and the Provisional Government arrested the Bolshevik leaders? In that case, Trotsky would have been expendable. Stalin would not ;P

[daft punk]

Here's a quote from Trotsky saying Nazis are revolutionary at heart.

"The German soldiers, that is, the workers and peasants, will in the majority of cases have far more sympathy for the vanquished peoples than for their own ruling caste. The necessity to act at every step in the capacity of 'pacifiers and oppressors will swiftly disintegrate the armies of occupation, infecting them with a revolutionary spirit." - From: Writings of Leon Trotsky (1939-40) - (NY: Merit Publishers, 1969), p. 113.

Good guess!

This can't be found on the net to check. Anyway, the Nazi occupations didnt last long. What Trotsky definitely said was that occupying would be very difficult for the Nazis, and it was like reading about the Americans trying to occupy Iraq, all about the resistance.

Trotsky:

"What the Nazis Now Face

In the defeated countries the position of the masses will immediately become worsened in the extreme. Added to social oppression is national oppression, the main burden of which is likewise borne by the workers. Of all the forms of dictatorship, the totalitarian dictatorship of a foreign conqueror is the most intolerable. At the same time, to the extent that the Nazis will try to utilize the natural resources and the industrial machinery of the nations defeated by them, the Nazis will themselves become inevitably dependent upon the native peasants and workers. Only after the victory do economic difficulties always begin. It is impossible to attach a soldier with a rifle to each Polish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Belgian, French worker and peasant. National Socialism is without any prescription for transforming defeated peoples from foes into friends.
The experience of the Germans in the Ukraine in 1918 has demonstrated how difficult it is to utilize through military methods the natural wealth and labor power of a defeated people; and how swiftly an army of occupation is demoralized in an atmosphere of universal hostility. These very same processes will develop on a far vaster scale in the European continent under Nazi occupation. One can expect with assurance the rapid transformation of all the conquered countries into powder magazines. The danger is rather this, that the explosions may occur too soon without sufficient preparation and lead to isolated defeats. It is in general impossible, however, to speak of the European and the world revolution without taking into account partial defeats.
Hitler, the conqueror, has naturally day-dreams of becoming the chief executioner of the proletarian revolution in any part of Europe. But this does not at all mean that Hitler will be strong enough to deal with the proletarian revolution as he has been able to deal with imperialist democracy. It would be a fatal blunder, unworthy of a revolutionary party, to turn Hitler into a fetish, to exaggerate his power, to overlook the objective limits of his successes and conquests. True enough, Hitler boastfully promises to establish the domination of the German people at the expense of all Europe and even of the whole world, “for one thousand years.” But in all likelihood this splendor will not endure even for ten years."


http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/06/course.htm


and of course where the Nazis did occupy, the workers did form resistance movements, led, to their credit, usually by communists.

And there was a revolutionary wave throughout the occupied areas at the end of the war. Unfortunately most of this was dissipated by the Stalinists under orders from Moscow (often they ignored Moscow to some extent).

Anyway, continuing the random quotes, here's another, Trotsky quoting Marx:


Two years before the Communist Manifesto, young Marx wrote:
“A development of the productive forces is the absolutely necessary practical premise [of Communism], because without it want is generalized, and with want the struggle for necessities begins again, and that means that all the old crap must revive.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch03.htm

lovin' that translation.

The old crap revived in 1924. Stalin should have hosed it down with socialist disinfectant, but he didn't. He took to it like a fly.