Leon Trotsky Revolution Quotations

It is quite clear that the German and Chinese revolutions in case of victory would have changed the face of Europe and Asia, and perhaps of the whole world.

Revolutionary realism tries to draw the maximum advantage from every situation - that is what makes it revolutionary - but at the same time it does not permit us to set ourselves fantastic aims - that is what makes it realistic.

I emphasized the significance of revolutionary strategy.

[Joseph] Stalin closes the exposition of these [Leon Trotsky] ideas with the words, "Such are in general the characteristic features of [Vladimir] Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution."

Once again, he who ignores the problems of revolutionary strategy would do better not to talk about revolutions at all.

[Vladimir] Lenin died in January, 1924; three months later [Joseph] Stalin expounded in writing Lenin's conception of the proletarian revolution.

That the existence of the Soviet Union has an international revolutionary significance is a commonplace equally recognized by friends and foes.

England is nothing but the last ward of the European madhouse, and quite possibly it will prove to be the ward for particularly violent cases.

In 1925 - 27 the revolution in China was destroyed by the false revolutionary strategy of the Stalinist faction. To this last question I consecrate my book, Problems of the Chinese Revolution (issued by the Pioneer Publishers, New York 1932).

No one revolution up to now has brought all that was expected of it by the masses. Hence the inevitability of a certain disillusionment, of a lowering of the activity of the vanguard, and consequently, of the growing importance of the rearguard. [Joseph] Stalin's faction has raised itself on the wave of reaction against the October revolution.

Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.

The revolution has its own laws: in the period of its culmination it pushes the most highly developed, determined and far-seeing stratum of the revolutionary class to the most advanced positions.

Revolutions are always verbose.

It is therefore not true that the mere existence of the Soviet Union is capable of assuring the victory of the revolution in other countries.

It is also false that the revolution ripens and comes to development only in the national soil.

The theory of the permanent revolution, in contradiction to the theory of socialism in one country, was recognized by the entire Bolshevik party during the period from 1917 to 1923.

If we had had more time for discussion we should probably have made a great many more mistakes.

What shall we call an "immediate possibility"? In 1923 the situation in Germany was profoundly revolutionary, but what was lacking for a victorious revolution was a correct strategy.

Only the defeat of the proletariat in Germany in 1923 gave the decisive push to the creation of Stalin's theory of national socialism: the downward curve of the revolution gave rise to Stalinism, not to the theory of the permanent revolution, which was first formulated by me in 1905. This theory is not bound to a definite calendar of revolutionary events; it only reveals the world-wide interdependence of the revolutionary process.

Look back at history - those who guided the revolution in the time of its culmination never kept their leading positions long after the turning point.