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I Come To The Categorical Conclusion That Precisely At This Moment We Must Give Battle To The Black Hundred Clergy In The Most Decisive And Merciless Manner And Crush Its Resistance With Such Brutality That It Will Not Forget It For Decades To Come. The Greater The Number Of Representatives Of The Reactionary Clergy And Reactionary Bourgeoisie We Succeed In Executing For This Reason, The Better.

-Vladimir Lenin

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I Come To The

Vladimir Lenin

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I Come To The Categorical Conclusion That Precisely At This Moment We Must Give Battle To The Black Hundred Clergy In The Most Decisive And Merciless Manner And Crush Its Resistance With Such Brutality That It Will Not Forget It For Decades To Come. The Greater The Number Of Representatives Of The Reactionary Clergy And Reactionary Bourgeoisie We Succeed In Executing For This Reason, The Better.

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It Is Necessary To Be Able To Withstand All This, To Agree To Any And Every Sacrifice, And Even - If Need Be - To Resort To All Sorts Of Stratagems, Manoeuvres And Illegal Methods, To Evasion And Subterfuges In Order To Penetrate The Trade Unions, To Remain In Them, And To Carry On Communist Work In Them At All Costs.

Communism Is Soviet Power Plus The Electrification Of The Whole Country.

Give Me Four Years To Teach The Children And The Seed I Have Sown Will Never Be Uprooted.

There Are No Morals In Politics; There Is Only Expedience. A Scoundrel May Be Of Use To Us Just Because He Is A Scoundrel.

Fascism Is Capitalism In Decay.

Sometimes Quantity Has A Quality All Its Own.

Unity Must Be Won, And Only The Workers, The Class-conscious Workers Themselves Can Win It - By Stubborn And Persistent Effort.

When A War Is Waged By Two Opposing Groups Of Robbers For The Sake Of Deciding Who Shall Have A Freer Hand To Oppress More People, Then The Question Of The Origin Of The War Is Of No Real Economic Or Political Significance.

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No Bolshevik, No Communist, No Intelligent Socialist Has Ever Entertained The Idea Of Violence Against The Middle Peasants. All Socialists Have Always Spoken Of Agreement With Them And Of Their Gradual And Voluntary Transition To Socialism.

Bourgeois Democracy Is Democracy Of Pompous Phrases, Solemn Words, Exuberant Promises And The High-sounding Slogans Of Freedom And Equality. But, In Fact, It Screens The Non-freedom And Inferiority Of Women, The Non-freedom And Inferiority Of The Toilers And Exploited.

Democracy Is A Form Of The State, It Represents, On The One Hand, The Organized, Systematic Use Of Force Against Persons; But, On The Other Hand, It Signifies The Formal Recognition Of Equality Of Citizens, The Equal Right Of All To Determine The Structure Of, And To Administer, The State.

Crime Is A Product Of Social Excess.

But I Can't Listen To Music Too Often. It Affects Your Nerves, Makes You Want To Say Stupid, Nice Things, And Stroke The Heads Of People Who Could Create Such Beauty While Living In This Vile Hell.

Only By Abolishing Private Property In Land And Building Cheap And Hygienic Dwellings Can The Housing Problem Be Solved.

Honesty In Politics Is The Result Of Strength; Hypocrisy Is The Result Of Weakness.

We Set Ourselves The Ultimate Aim Of Abolishing The State, I.e., All Organized And Systematic Violence, All Use Of Violence Against People In General.

Atheism Is A Natural And Inseparable Part Of Marxism, Of The Theory And Practice Of Scientific Socialism. Our Program Necessarily Includes The Propaganda Of Atheism.

The Sole "property" Of Matter With Whose Recognition Philosophical Materialism Is Bound Up Is The Property Of Being An Objective Reality, Of Existing Outside The Mind.

To Decide Once Every Few Years Which Members Of The Ruling Class Is To Repress And Crush The People Through Parliament-this Is The Real Essence Of Bourgeois Parliamentarism, Not Only In Parliamentary- Constitutional Monarchies, But Also In The Most Democratic Republics.

We Are Not Utopians, We Do Not “dream” Of Dispensing At Once With All Administration, With All Subordination. These Anarchist Dreams, Based Upon Incomprehension Of The Tasks Of The Proletarian Dictatorship, Are Totally Alien To Marxism, And, As A Matter Of Fact, Serve Only To Postpone The Socialist Revolution Until People Are Different. No, We Want The Socialist Revolution With People As They Are Now, With People Who Cannot Dispense With Subordination, Control, And "foremen And Accountants".

No Amount Of Political Freedom Will Satisfy The Hungry Masses.

If It Were Necessary To Give The Briefest Possible Definition Of Imperialism, We Should Have To Say That Imperialism Is The Monopoly Stage Of Capitalism.

Perfect Definition Of Atheist Dogma. Your Mind Has Been Subjected To Subtle Mental Conditioning Year After Year. Now The Atheist Lie Has Become The Truth To You. A Lie That Can Be Blown Away With The Real Truth. It Just Takes Time To Unwind The Atheist Mental Conditioning. The Truth Is Out There. Outside Of Atheist Dogma Lies The Truth!

Give Me Your Four Year Olds, And In A Generation I Will Build A Socialist State.

Despair Is Typical Of Those Who Do Not Understand The Causes Of Evil, See No Way Out, And Are Incapable Of Struggle. The Modern Industrial Proletariat Does Not Belong To The Category Of Such Classes.

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Only An Armed People Can Be The Real Bulwark Of Popular Liberty.

To Accept Anything On Trust, To Preclude Critical Application And Development, Is A Grievous Sin.

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This Fear Of Criticism Displayed By The Advocates Of Freedom Of Criticism Cannot Be Attributed Solely To Craftiness. No, The Majority Of The Economists Look With Sincere Resentment Upon All Theoretical Controversies, Factional Disagreements, Broad Political Questions, Plans For Organising Revolutionaries, Etc.

Human Reason Has Discovered Many Amazing Things In Nature And Will Discover Still More, And Will Thereby Increase Its Power Over Nature.

It Is Essential To Grasp The Incontestable Truth That A Marxist Must Take Cognisance Of Real Life, Of The True Facts Of Reality, And Not Cling To A Theory Of Yesterday, Which, Like All Theories, At Best Only Outlines The Main And The General, Only Comes Near To Embracing Life In All Its Complexity.

It Is In Prison ... That One Becomes A Real Revolutionary.

You Can Become A Communist Only When You Enrich Your Mind With A Knowledge Of All The Treasures Created By Mankind.

The Establishment Of A Central Bank Is 90% Of Communizing A Nation.

Materialism Is The Recognition Of "objects In Themselves", Or Outside The Mind; Ideas And Sensations Are Copies Of Images Of Those Objects.

Politics Begin Where The Masses Are, Not Where There Are Thousands, But Where There Are Millions, That Is Where Serious Politics Begin.

Whenever The Cause Of The People Is Entrusted To Professors, It Is Lost.

The Suppression Of The Bourgeois State By The Proletarian State Is Impossible Without Violent Revolution.

The Bolsheviks Could Not Have Retained Power For Two And A Half Months, Let Alone Two And A Half Years, Without The Most Rigorous And Truly Iron Discipline In Our Party.

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Authority Poisons Everybody Who Takes Authority On Himself.

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We Are Not Shooting Enough Professors.

You Have Read And Heard That Communist Theory-the Science Of Communism Created In The Main By Marx, This Doctrine Of Marxism-has Ceased To Be The Work Of A Single Socialist Of The Nineteenth Century, Even Though He Was A Genius, And That It Has Become The Doctrine Of Millions And Tens Of Millions Of Proletarians All Over The World, Who Are Applying It In Their Struggle Against Capitalism.

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You Cannot Do Anything Without Rousing The Masses To Action.

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Without A Revolutionary Theory There Cannot Be A Revolutionary Movement.

I Am A Bad, Wicked Man, But I Am Practicing Moral Self-purification; I Don't Eat Meat Any More, I Now Eat Rice Cutlets.

Peace, Land, And Bread! All Power To The Soviet!

The War Is Relentless: It Puts The Alternative In A Ruthless Relief.

The History Of All Countries Shows That The Working Class Exclusively By Its Own Effort Is Able To Develop Only Trade-union Consciousness.

The Natural Scientist Must Be A Modern Materialist, A Conscious Adherent Of The Materialism Represented By Marx, I.e., He Must Be A Dialectical Materialist.

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Democracy For An Insignificant Minority, Democracy For The Rich -- That Is The Democracy Of Capitalist Society.

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The Marxist Doctrine Is Omnipotent Because It Is True. It Is Comprehensive And Harmonious, And Provides Men With An Integral World Outlook Irreconcilable With Any Form Of Superstition, Reaction, Or Defence Of Bourgeois Oppression. It Is The Legitimate Successor To The Best That Man Produced In The Nineteenth Century, As Represented By German Philosophy, English Political Economy And French Socialism.

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The Whole Struggle Of Our Party (and Of The Working Class Movement In Europe Generally) Must Be Directed Against Opportunism. The Latter Is Not A Current Of Opinion, Not A Tendency; It (opportunism) Has Now Become The Organised Tool Of The Bourgeoisie Within The Working Class Movement.

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When It Comes To Hang The Capitalists They Will Compete With Each Other To Sell Us The Rope At A Lower Price.

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Under Socialism All Will Govern In Turn And Will Soon Become Accustomed To No One Governing.

It Is Not National Interests We Are Upholding - We Claim That The Interests Of Socialism, The Interests Of World Socialism, Rank Higher Than National Interests, Higher Than The Interests Of The State. We Are Defenders Of The Socialist Fatherland.

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The Government Is Tottering. We Must Deal It The Death Blow An Any Cost. To Delay Action Is The Same As Death.

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Any Army Which Does Not Train To Use All The Weapons, All The Means And Methods Of Warfare That The Enemy Possesses, Or May Possess, Is Behaving In An Unwise Or Even Criminal Manner. This Applies To Politics Even More Than It Does To The Art Of War.

We Would Be Deceiving Both Ourselves And The People If We Concealed From The Masses The Necessity Of A Desperate, Bloody War Of Extermination, As The Immediate Task Of The Coming Revolutionary Action.

You Cannot Do Anything Without Rousing The Masses To Action. A Plenary Meeting Of The Soviet Must Be Called To Decide On Mass Searches In Petrograd And The Goods Stations. To Carry Out These Searches, Each Factory And Company Must Form Contingents, Not On A Voluntary Basis: It Must Be The Duty Of Everyone To Take Part In These Searches Under The Threat Of Being Deprived Of His Bread Card. We Can't Expect To Get Anywhere Unless We Resort To Terrorism: Speculators Must Be Shot On The Spot. Moreover, Bandits Must Be Dealt With Just As Resolutely: They Must Be Shot On The Spot.

Comrades! The Kulak Uprising In Your Five Districts Must Be Crushed Without Pity. You Must Make Example Of These People. (1) Hang (i Mean Hang Publicly, So That People See It) At Least 100 Kulaks, Rich Bastards, And Known Bloodsuckers. (2) Publish Their Names. (3) Seize All Their Grain. (4) Single Out The Hostages Per My Instructions In Yesterday's Telegram. Do All This So That For Miles Around People See It All, Understand It, Tremble, And Tell Themselves That We Are Killing The Bloodthirsty Kulaks And That We Will Continue To Do So ...find Tougher People.

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Give Me A Child For The First 5 Years Of His Life And He Will Be Mine Forever.

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We Must Pursue The Removal Of Church Property By Any Means Necessary In Order To Secure For Ourselves A Fund Of Several Hundred Million Gold Rubles.

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No Marxist Can Deny That The Interests Of Socialism Are Higher Than The Interests Of The Right Of Nations To Self-determination.

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Where The Bourgeois Economists Saw A Relation Between Things (the Exchange Of One Commodity For Another) Marx Revealed A Relation Between People.

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The Bourgeoisie Is Many Times Stronger Than We. To Give It The Weapon Of Freedom Of The Press Is To Ease The Enemy's Cause, To Help The Class Enemy. We Do Not Desire To End In Suicide, So We Will Not Do This.

Recovery Proceeding Excellently. Am Sure That The Crushing Of The Kazan Czechs And Whiteguards, As Well As Of The Kulak Extortioners Supporting Them, Will Be Exemplarily Ruthless.

We Need The Real, Nation-wide Terror Which Reinvigorates The Country And Through Which The Great French Revolution Achieved Glory.

As An Ultimate Objective, "peace" Simply Means Communist World Control.

If Democracy, In Essence, Means The Abolition Of Class Domination, Then Why Should Not A Socialist Minister Charm The Whole Bourgeois World By Orations On Class Collaboration?

Communists Have Become Bureaucrats. If Anything Will Destroy Us, It Is This.

The Bourgeoisie Incites The Workers Of One Nation Against Those Of Another In The Endeavour To Keep Them Disunited.

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War Cannot Be Abolished Unless Classes Are Abolished.

One Man With A Gun Can Control 100 Without One.

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The Bolshevik Slogans And Ideas On The Whole Have Been Confirmed By History; But Concretely Things Have Worked Out Differently; They Are More Original, More Peculiar, More Varied Than Anyone Could Have Expected.

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Let The "socialist" Snivellers Croak, Let The Bourgeoisie Rage And Fume, But Only People Who Shut Their Eyes So As Not To See, And Stuff Their Ears So As Not To Hear, Can Fail To Notice That All Over The World The Birth Pangs Of The Old, Capitalist Society, Which Is Pregnant With Socialism, Have Begun.

We Can And Must Write In A Language Which Sows Among The Masses Hate, Revulsion, And Scorn Toward Those Who Disagree With Us.

The Only One Who Doesn't Make Mistakes Is The One Who Doesn't Do Anything.

Ideological Talk And Phrase Mongering About Political Liberties Should Be Disposed With; All That Is Just Mere Chatter And Phrase Mongering. We Should Get Away From Those Phrases.

Free Speech Is A Bourgeois Prejudice.

One Must Not Count In Thousands, Like The Propagandist Belonging To A Small Group That Has Not Yet Given Leadership To The Masses; In These Circumstances One Must Count In Millions And Tens Of Millions.

Capitalists Will Sell Us The Rope We Will Hang Them With.

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You Cannot Make A Revolution In White Gloves.

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Human Thought By Its Nature Is Capable Of Giving, And Does Give, Absolute Truth, Which Is Compounded Of A Sum-total Of Relative Truths.

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Where And When Have Riots And Anarchy Been Provoked By Wise Measures? If The Government Had Acted Wisely, And If Their Measures Had Met The Needs Of The Poor Peasants, Would There Have Been Unrest Among The Peasant Masses?

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To Picture World History As Advancing Smoothly And Steadily Without Sometimes Taking Gigantic Strides Backward Is Undialectical, Unscientific And Theoretically Wrong.

I Don't Care What Becomes Of Russia. To Hell With It. All This Is Only The Road To A World Revolution.

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Whoever Wants To Reach Socialism By Any Other Path Than That Of Political Democracy Will Inevitably Arrive At Conclusions That Are Absurd And Reactionary Both In The Economic And The Political Sense.

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Any Cook Should Be Able To Run The Country.

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Unity Is A Great Thing And A Great Slogan. But What The Workers’ Cause Needs Is The Unity Of Marxists, Not Unity Between Marxists, And Opponents And Distorters Of Marxism.

All Contemporary Religions And Churches, All And Every Kind Of Religious Organization, Marxism Has Always Viewed As Organs Of Bourgeois Reaction, Serving As A Defense Of Exploitation And The Doping Of The Working-classes.

We Do Not Have Time To Play At "oppositions" At "conferences." We Will Keep Our Political Opponents... Whether Open Or Disguised As "nonparty," In Prison.

Why Should Freedom Of Speech And Freedom Of Press Be Allowed? Why Should A Government Which Is Doing What It Believes To Be Right Allow Itself To Be Criticized? It Would Not Allow Opposition By Lethal Weapons. Ideas Are Much More Fatal Things Than Guns. Why Should Any Man Be Allowed To Buy A Printing Press And Disseminate Pernicious Opinions Calculated To Embarrass The Government?

It Is At Moments Of Need That One Learns Who One's Friends Are. Defeated Armies Learn Their Lesson.

It Is More Pleasant And Useful To Go Through The 'experience Of The Revolution' Than To Write About It.

It Is Not For Nothing That Skaldin In One Part Of His Book Quotes Adam Smith: We Have Seen That Both His Views And The Character Of His Arguments In Many Respects Repeat The Theses Of That Great Ideologist Of The Progressive Bourgeoisie.

But Every Little Difference May Become A Big One If It Is Insisted On.

Politics Is The Most Concentrated Expression Of Economics.

Give Me Just One Generation Of Youth, And I'll Transform The Whole World.

Revolution Can Never Be Forecast; It Cannot Be Foretold; It Comes Of Itself. Revolution Is Brewing And Is Bound To Flare Up.

Pacifism, The Preaching Of Peace In The Abstract, Is One Of The Means Of Duping The Working Class.

False Rhetoric And False Boastfulness Spell Moral Ruin And Lead Unfailingly To Political Extinction.

The Press Should Be Not Only A Collective Propagandist And A Collective Agitator, But Also A Collective Organizer Of The Masses.

One Must Always Try To Be As Radical As Reality Itself.

The Soundest Strategy In War Is To Postpone Operations Until The Moral Disintegration Of The Enemy Renders The Delivery Of The Mortal Blow Both Possible And Easy.

When We Are Victorious On A World Scale I Think We Shall Use Gold For The Purpose Of Building Public Lavatories In The Streets Of Some Of The Largest Cities Of The World.

Soviet Power Is A New Type Of State In Which There Is No Bureacracy, No Police, No Standing Army.

You All Know That Even When Women Have Full Rights, They Still Remain Fatally Downtrodden Because All Housework Is Left To Them. In Most Cases Housework Is The Most Unproductive, The Most Barbarous And The Most Arduous Work A Woman Can Do. It Is Exceptionally Petty And Does Not Include Anything That Would In Any Way Promote The Development Of The Woman.

The Status Of Women Up To Now Has Been Compared To That Of A Slave; Women Have Been Tied To The Home, And Only Socialism Can Save Them From This. They Will Only Be Completely Emancipated When We Change From Small-scale Individual Farming To Collective Farming And Collective Working Of The Land.

The Constitution Of Soviet Russia Must Insure Equal Rights For All Citizens Regardless Of Sex, Creed, Race, Or Nationality.

Don't Be Afraid To Admit Defeat. Learn From Defeat. Do Over Again More Thoroughly, More Carefully, And More Systematically What You Have Done Badly.

The War Is Relentless: It Puts The Alternative In A Ruthless Relief: Either To Perish, Or To Catch Up With The Advanced Countries And Outdistance Them, Too, In Economic Matters.

The Entire Trend Of Development Is Towards Abolition Of Coercive Domination Of One Part Of Society Over Another.

For The First Time The Peasant Has Seen Real Freedom - Freedom To Eat His Bread, Freedom From Starvation.

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