History Quotes 6 Flashcards
Final set for Essay!!!
“The only reason for Bolshevik success lay in their accomplishing the vast and simple desires of the people, calling them to the work of tearing down and destroying the old, and afterwards, in the smoke of falling ruins, cooperating with them to erect the framework of the new.”
John Reed (Secondary source)
“The system of legislation the Bolsheviks set in place within two weeks of the October coup, for all its revolutionary rhetoric, marked a reversion to the autocratic practices of tsarist before the October manifesto of October 17, 1905. They simply wiped out eleven intervening years of constitutionalism.”
Leon Trotsky (Primary source)
“Lenin wanted earthly happiness for the people, at least those he called ‘the proletariat.’ but he regarded it as normal to build this ‘happiness’ on blood, coercion and the denial of freedom.”
Vokogonov (Secondary source)
“We shall now proceed to build, on the space cleared of historical rubbish, the airy, towering edifice of socialist society.”
Lenin (Primary source)
“History will never forgive us.”
Lenin (Primary source)
“The provisional government has been deposed. Government authority has passed into the hands of the organ of the Petrograd Soviety of Workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, the military revolutionary committee, which stands at the head of the petrograd proletariat and garrison.”
Lenin (Primary source)
“A rising of the masses requires no justification.”
Leon Trotsky (Primary source)
“In his guidance of the uprising, Lenin’s genius as a leader of the masses, a wise and fearless strategist, who clearly saw what direction the revolution would take, was strikingly revealed.”
G.D Obichkin (Secondary source)
“There was clearly much more behind the Bolshevik’s victory than ideological or organizational superiority over other political forces. The Bolsheviks were simply much more in tune with popular feeling than either the constitutionally-minded liberal politicians or the moderate socialists.”
Wood (Secondary source)
“The October insurrection was a coup d’etat, actively supported by an unknown minority of the population…but it took place amidst a social revolution, which was centered on the popular realisation of soviet power.”
Orlando Figes (Secondary source)
“The Bolsheviks did not seize power; they picked it up.”
Adam Ulam (Secondary source)
“In October 1917 the Bolsheviks were pushing against an already open door.”
Michael Lynch (Secondary source)
“If Lenin had never existed, a socialist government would probably have ruled Russia by the end of [1917].”
Robert Service (Secondary source)
“The Bolsheviks were leaning against an open door.”
Lynch
“October was a classic coup d’etat, the capture of governmental authority by a small band, carried out in defence to the democratic professions of the age, with a show of mass participation, but with hardly any mass involvement.”
Richard Pipes (Secondary source)
