It could and must, be explained that in the civil war we destroyed the White Guards in order that they should not destroy the workers. Consequently, … - Leon Trotsky
" "It could and must, be explained that in the civil war we destroyed the White Guards in order that they should not destroy the workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the destruction of human life - a puzzle the dialectical secret of which was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient sages.
About Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky (Лев Давидович Троцкий; born Lev Davidovich Bronstein; Лев Давидович Бронштейн]; 7 November (O.S. 26 October) 1879 – 21 August 1940) was a Russian Marxist, intellectual, and revolutionary. In the early Soviet Union, he founded the Politburo, served as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, and created and led the Red Army. After Lenin's death, Trotsky was exiled for his opposition to Joseph Stalin's policies. His 1940 assassination (with an ice axe) in Mexico was carried out by a Soviet agent (Ramón Mercader) at Stalin's behest.
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Additional quotes by Leon Trotsky
Similar (of course, far from identical) irritations in similar conditions call out similar reflexes; the more powerful the irritation, the sooner it overcomes personal peculiarities. To a tickle, people react differently, but to a red-hot iron, alike. As a steam-hammer converts a sphere and a cube alike into sheet metal, so under the blow of too great and inexorable events resistances are smashed and the boundaries of “individuality” lost.