Inside the Party, Stalin has put himself above all criticism and the State. It is impossible to displace him except by assassination. Every oppositio… - Leon Trotsky

The balance of political power at any given moment is determined under the influences of fundamental and secondary factors of differing degrees of effectiveness, and only in its fundamental quality is it determined by the state of the development of production.

Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

The Russian proletariat found its revolutionary audacity not only in itself. Its very position as minority of the nation suggests that it could not have given its struggle a sufficient scope — certainly not enough to take its place at the head of the state — if it had not found a mighty support in the thick of the people. Such a support was guaranteed to it by the agrarian problem.