Bolsheviks Quotes
This view of the obsolescence of the family was one of the huge ideological chasms between Russia and the Western Democracies,
Vladimir Lenin. Actually, when the peasants resisted collectivization the Russian State did use violence and intimidation. And Stalin later completely ignored this principle and brutalized the peasantry.
1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor. This turned out to be one of the worst predictions in political history.
War between England and Germany had just commenced. The last sentence refers to the fact that Hitler had recently signed a peace pact with Stalin to everyone’s surprise as Hitler told the German people over and over that Russia was Germany’s biggest enemy. The pact was only a ruse on Hitler’s part to delay Russia’s entry into the war. Hitler broke the treaty and invaded Russia a little later.
Zenzinov was often a critic of the Bolsheviks.
Yuliy Osipovich Martov
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. Trotsky grew disillusioned with the Communist Party Direction (see {634717})and went into exile in Mexico where he was murdered under orders of Stalin.
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. The Bolsheviks had all they could do to solidify their revolution and try and manage the basic needs of food and the economy. There was little thinking about foreign policy or Russia’s role in the world at this time.
Yuliy Osipovich Martov
Yuliy Osipovich Martov. Criticism of the Bolshevik behavior in dealing with counter-revolutionaries in the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution. This despite the fact that the death penalty had been abolished right after the Revolution. See {590510}
Vladimir Lenin. The Bolshivik Communists were opposed to a strong directly elected parliament. The Mensheviks and almost all others wanted the democratic notion of a parliament. Lenin, a practical politician, counseled to go against their theory and go with what was popular. They did.
After the Russian Revolution in 1917, there was a vicious civil war and the Communists governed ruthlessly not even pretending to follow the democratic principles that they had espoused before they can to power. This was a typical intellectual rationalization of a dictatorial behavior that lasted until the fall of Communist Russia. However, at this time most supporters thought that things would soon change. They only got worse culminating in Stalin’s atrocities. The Bolsheviks were the ruling communist party in Russia.
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. The Reds finally won. Many millions of Russians died in the fighting; as many from disease; and even more from the starvation and executions that the victorious Reds (Bolsheviks) imposed on the peasantry who opposed the forced selling of the crops at low prices determined by the Communist government. During this period most of the Russian institutions collapsed. Trotsky, a leading Red, later broke with the Reds and went into exile in Mexico where he was murdered on orders of Stalin.