Victor Mikhailovich Chernov Quotes

Now that the great revolution has come one feels that however intelligent Lenin may be he begins to fade beside the genius of Trotsky

Lenin, the greatest theorist of them all, did not know what he was going to do after he had got the power.

Lenin was a Russian bourgeois who cursed the weakness and ineptitude of the Russian bourgeoisie

… the great mischief-maker Lenin

The chief fruit of the First World War was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power.

It can't work—for Lenin and Trotsky are both extremely unpopular.... Lenin ... will never be able to dominate the Russian people.

What happened in Russia in 1917 wasn't a revolution - it was a coup d'etat.

The collapse of Russia was the second great event of 1917.

In the early days of the Russian Revolution in 1917, I was completely in sympathy with it. I felt that it established a new era in the history of the modern world. I was so overwhelmed by it that, if people made any unfriendly comment, I would vigorously defend it. If people condemned the Communist party, I would speak in its defense.

Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live.

I think I must be the only British actor who's played both Stalin and Trotsky. I need to play Lenin so I can make it a triptych.

My father was convinced, I think rightly, that if he stayed in Russia, he would have trouble with Lenin.

Ten days that shook the world.

A new Russian Revolution is inevitable, and that it may come much sooner than anyone would now dare to hope… I do not believe it possible that the thirst for freedom and decency in the countries of the Soviet Empire can remain much longer unslaked, and that any attempt either to quench it by total repression or to satisfy it by real reforms, will be cataclysmically destructive of the eroded foundations of the entire State system.

The Russian Revolution has demonstrated beyond doubt that the State idea, State Socialism, in all its manifestations ... is entirely and hopelessly bankrupt.

All power to the Soviet of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies.

I was very much disturbed by Lenin's political ruthlessness

For about 20 years we have had practically no collective leadership; there flourished the cult of the individual which was [earlier] condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin

… the Communists, who take their inspiration if not their orders from Moscow, are now a recognized party or faction in every country, and in several constitute a danger to the existing order.

In 1917, with the Bolsheviks, you had intra-elite conversations about what the country should be doing. You had arguments. Under Stalin, you didn’t really. But then after Stalin, you started having those arguments again.

The sudden collapse of the monarchy that had ruled Russia for three hundred years led to chaos. Russia immediately became, as one participant put it, 'the freest country in the world.'

Lenin had just reflected that the revolution would never happen in his lifetime when in February 1917, hungry crowds in Petrograd overthrew Nicholas II while the revolutionaries were abroad, exiled, or infiltrated by the secret police.

In 1917 European history, in the old sense, came to an end. World history began. It was the year of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom repudiated the traditional standards of political behaviour. Both preached Utopia, Heaven on Earth. It was the moment of birth for our contemporary world.

In October 1917, we parted with the old world, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a new world, a world of Communism. We shall never turn off that road.