Russia AOS2 Quotes

Question 1

Lenin to his followers in early 1918 regarding the Constituent Assembly

Answer 1

“Trust in the mood, but don’t forget your rifles.”

Question 2

Lenin on handing over power to the Constituent Assembly

Answer 2

“To hand over power to the Constituent Assembly would again be compromising with the malignant bourgeoisie”

Question 3

Trotsky’s Brest-Litovsk Negotiation Policy

Answer 3

“Neither peace, nor war”

Question 4

Lenin on Brest-Litovsk (March 1918)

Answer 4

“It is a fact that at the moment…the army at the front, being in no condition to fight, is fleeing in panic…the new terms are worse, more onerous and humiliating…it is our pseudo-Lefts…who are to blame.”

Question 5

Decree on Red Terror (5th September 1918)

Answer 5

“In the present situation, it is necessary to safeguard the rear by means of terror”

Question 6

Nikolai Krylenko (Commissar of Justice) on Red Terror

Answer 6

“We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more”

Question 7

An unknown Chekist on how to identify an ‘enemy of the people’

Answer 7

“One needs only to go into the kitchen and look into his soup pot. If there is meat in it, then he is an enemy of the people. Stand him up against the wall!”

Question 8

White Army General Denekin on his Troops

Answer 8

“If I raise the republican flag, I lose half my volunteers, and if I raise the monarchist flag, I lose the other half. But we have to save Russia.”

Question 9

Lenin on State Capitalism (April 1918)

Answer 9

“State monopoly capitalism inevitably and unavoidably implies a step, or several steps, towards Socialism!”

Question 10

Trotsky’s War Communism Catchcry (1918)

Answer 10

“Everything for the front!”

Question 11

Lenin on the Class Based Ration System (July 1918)

Answer 11

“He who does not work, neither shall he eat.”

Question 12

Lenin on War Communism (1921)

Answer 12

“It was not, nor could it be a policy that corresponded to the economic tasks of the proletariat. It was a temporary measure.”

Question 13

Lenin on the Economy at the Tenth Party Congress

Answer 13

“The national economy must be put back on its feet at all costs. The first thing to do is to restore, consolidate, and improve peasant farming.”

Question 14

Critics of the NEP Branded It…

Answer 14

“New Exploitation of the Proletariat.”

Question 15

Christopher Hill on NEP

Answer 15

“Lenin always insisted that the New Economic Policy…was really the old economic policy of 1918, but he never attempted to disguise the fact that it was a large scale retreat, another breathing space, a Brest-Litovsk on the economic front.”

Question 16

On Party Unity (March 1921)

Answer 16

In order to ensure strict discipline…the Congress gives the Central Committee full powers to apply all measures of party punishment.”

Question 16

Trotsky on the Kronstadt Sailors

Answer 16

“The pride and glory of the revolution…the reddest of the red”

Question 17

Point 1 of the Petropavlosk Resolution (28th February 1921)

Answer 17

“The present soviets do not represent the will of the workers and peasants…re-elect the soviets immediately by secret voting.”

Question 18

Alexander Berkman’s Diary Entry on Kronstadt

Answer 18

“My heart is numb with despair; something has died within me… terror and despotism have crushed the life born in October. Dictatorship is trampling the masses under foot. The revolution is dead.”

Question 19

Felix Dzerzhinsky on the Role of the Cheka (June 1918)

Answer 19

“The Cheka is obliged to defend the revolution and conquer the enemy even if its sword does by chance sometimes fall on the heads of the innocent.”

Question 20

The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger! (21st February 1918)

Answer 20

“Enemy agents, profiteers, marauders, hooligans, counter-revolutionary agitators and German spies, are to be summarily shot.”

Question 21

Decree on Land (26th October 1917)

Answer 21

“Private ownership of land shall be abolished forever.”

Question 21

Decree on Suppression of Hostile Newspapers (27th October 1917)

Answer 21

“Temporary and extraordinary measures have been adopted for the purpose of cutting off the stream of lies in which the press would be glad to drown the young victory of the people.”

Question 21

Decree on Eight-Hour Working Day (29th October 1917)

Answer 21

“The working time determined by enterprises shall not exceed 8 hours per day and 48 hours per week.”

Question 22

Peasant Letter to the Government (1920)

Answer 22

“We welcome soviet power, but give us ploughs, harrows and machines and stop seizing our grain, milk, eggs and meat.”

Question 23

Ron Suny on Continuity and Change (6)

Answer 23

“By the end of the 1920s the Soviet people enjoyed greater security, better health care, higher literacy, better nutrition, greater social mobility, and more social equality than most of them had ever experienced.”

Question 24

Robert Service on Continuity and Change

Answer 24

“The RSFSR had facets reminiscent of the tsarist order at its worst. Central power was being asserted in an authoritarian fashion. Ideological intolerance was being asserted and organised dissent repressed.”

Question 25

Richard Pipes on Lenin

Answer 25

“Lenin was, not an idealist, but a mass murderer, a man who believed that the best way to solve problems … was to kill off the people who caused them.”