Stalinism Quotes

• Language is wild - you can't fence it or tell it what to do - and it's the same with people. Even under the worst excesses of Stalinism or consumerism, the human spirit will still express itself.

  Jay Griffiths

  People, Excess, Spirit

  "Call of the wild" by Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. June 6, 2007.

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• For me, Stalinism was even a greater philosophical problem than Nazism. Under Nazism, if you were a Jew, you were simply killed, no questions asked, you had nothing to prove. Under Stalinism, of course, most [victims] were on trial for false accusations; most of them were not traitors. There is one interesting feature: that they were tortured or through some kind of blackmail forced to confess to being traitors.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Philosophical, Interesting, Trials

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the 'star' system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another - Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida - some of them obscene ( Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous ( Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage.

  Noam Chomsky

  Stars, Self, Intellectual

  Noam Chomsky, Jean Bricmont, Julie Franck (2010). “Chomsky Notebook”, p.72, Columbia University Press

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• In the case of Stalinism, people actually distorted science, because it was for the good of the Communist Party.

  Richard Dawkins

  Party, People, Communist

  Source: www.newstatesman.com

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• Stalinism is linked with a cult of personality and massive violations of the law, with repression and camps. There is nothing like that in Russia and, I hope, will never again be...

  Vladimir Putin

  Russia, Cult Of Personality, Law

  "Vladimir Putin outdoes himself with 'record-making' televised Q&A" by Miriam Elder, www.theguardian.com. April 25, 2013.

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• 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.

  Leon Trotsky

  Curves, Firsts, Revolution

  Source: www.marxists.org

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• All important architecture of the last century was strongly influenced by political systems. Look at the Soviet system, with its constructivism and Stalinism, Weimer with its Modern style, Mussolini and, of course, the Nazis and Albert Speer's colossal structures. Today's architecture is subservient to the market and its terms. The market has supplanted ideology. Architecture has turned into a spectacle. It has to package itself and no longer has significance as anything but a landmark.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Political, Style, Important

  ""Evil Can also Be Beautiful"". Interview with Matthias Matussek, Joachim Kronsbein, www.spiegel.de. March 27, 2006.

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• In Stalinism, everybody was potentially a victim in a totally contingent way.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Way, Victim

  Interview with Dianna Dilworth, www.believermag.com. July 2004.

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• It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.

  Noam Chomsky

  Freedom, Power, Government

  Noam Chomsky (2013). “How the World Works”, p.217, Soft Skull Press

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• Again, it is belief without evidence. In the case of Stalinism, people actually distorted science, because it was for the good of the Communist Party.

  Richard Dawkins

  Party, People, Belief

  Source: newrepublic.com

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• The nuclear age has refuted the idea of progress and Marxism has been refuted by Stalinism. Therefore people have returned to the historic religion.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Ideas, People, Age

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

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• The Bolshevik revolution was a counter-revolution. Its first moves were to destroy and eliminate every socialist tendency that had developed in the pre-revolutionary period. Their goal was as they said; it wasn't a big secret. They regarded the Soviet Union as sort a backwater. They were orthodox Marxists, expecting a revolution in Germany. They moved toward what they themselves called "state capitalism," then they moved on to Stalinism. They called it democracy and called it socialism. The one claim was as ludicrous as the other.

  Noam Chomsky

  Moving, Goal, Secret

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• Stalinism - or communism - is the only ideology Americans know how to demonise... no one knows what it is, it's just a synonym for the Empire of Evil.

  Chris Kraus

  Evil, Empires, Communism

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• It's not the possibility of Stalinism in the U.S. that's worrying me, it's the fact that the Stalinist C.P. seems doomed to fail and to bring down with it all the humanitarian tendencies I personally believe in--all the while acting as a mould on which its obverse the fascist mentality is made--and this recent massacre is certainly a sign of Stalinism's weakness not of its strength. None of that has anything to do with Marx's work--but it certainly does influence one's attitude towards a given political party.

  John Dos Passos

  Attitude, Party, Believe

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• Criticism in the universities, I'll have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. It's Stalinism without Stalin.

  Harold Bloom

  Sympathy, Criticism, Goes On

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• Americans need to understand that they have lost their country. The rest of the world needs to recognize that Washington is not merely the most complete police state since Stalinism, but also a threat to the entire world. The hubris and arrogance of Washington, combined with Washington's huge supply of weapons of mass destruction, make Washington the greatest threat that has ever existed to all life on the planet. Washington is the enemy of all humanity.

  Paul Craig Roberts

  Life, Country, Mass Destruction

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• Perestroika is nothing more than refined Stalinism.

  Dan Quayle

  Refined

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• I worry that we are approaching a time when that which is shocking is squeezed out by the Stalinism of political correctness.

  Joe Eszterhas

  Worry, Political, Correctness

  "The Hollywood hitman". Interview with Ed Vulliamy, www.theguardian.com. August 19, 2000.

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• It is often said that ‘the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning’. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained many other germs – a mass of other germs – and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious socialist revolution ought not to forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in the corpse – and which he may have carried in him since his birth – is that very sensible?

  Victor Serge

  Men, Years, Judging

  "Memoirs of a Revolutionary".

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• Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of. Quick: try to think of a single movie about the horrors of Stalinism. This is not a failure of imagination. This is moral meltdown.

  Mona Charen

  Dream, Thinking, Imagination

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• Early on I saw the repression and idolatry of Stalinism, and when it cracked, I was open to religion again.

  Lionel Blue

  Saws, Idolatry, Reefs

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• In Stalinism the tragedy is that its origin is some kind of radical emancipatory project. In the origins you had a kind of workers' uprising; the true enigma is how this project of emancipation went so wrong.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Uprising, Tragedy, Kind

  Interview with Dianna Dilworth, www.believermag.com. July 2004.

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• Though Stalinism may have been a needless tragedy for both the Russian people and communism as an ideal, there is the intellectually tantalizing possibility that for the world at large it was, as we shall see, a blessing in disguise.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Blessing, People, Tragedy

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• Stalinism is a pathology of socialism, Hitlerism being the apposite example for capitalism.

  Robert Heilbroner

  Example, Socialism, Pathology

  Robert L. Heilbroner (1980). “Marxism: For and Against”, p.169, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things -- they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Thinking, People, Horror

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