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D.B.Sorokin: "I asked Medved if Stalin revealed any interest by asking him the details of Kirov's assassination. In reply, Medved cursed and answered: 'Why in hell should he ask, if he knows better than myself the story of Kirov's assassination and that its organizers were Iagoda and Zaporozhets [both NKVD]'"

It was in precisely this period that he wrote with a blinding speed greater than any he had previously achieved, and in precisely one month and ten days turned out what was to become one of his greatest and most enduring masterpieces, PERE GORIOT.

Trotsky: "On the surface relatively a second-rater himself among Bolshevik leaders, [Stalin] had already begun convincing a growing group of Bolshevik politicians eager for advancement that he was able to reward the faithful with political plums."

It appeared to be true that Eveline fulfilled all of the secret requirements that had been his dream since he started to write... In book after book he had spelled out his ideal wife-mistress, a great lady of warmth and sensitivity, intellect and common sense, someone who would be, in turn, a mother, a sister, a daughter--and who behaved like a reckless wanton in bed.

[Kirov] was not innately cruel or sadistic, but the brutalities of World War I and over two years of civil war were apparently enough to inure him to human suffering. As a Socialist Revolutionary leader later observed, such experiences "wiped out the value of human life -- both of one's own and of others. It hardened people not to care about the death of millions."

Husbands, when they give their wives a talking, should do it out of hand, uttering their words hard, sharp, and quick, -- and should then go. There are some works that won't bear a preface, and this work of marital fault-finding is one of them.

Lenin (1917) wrote "Our tactics: complete mistrust, no support for the new [Provisional] government. We especially suspect Kerenskii. The arming of the proletariat provides the only guarantee. Immediate elections to the Petrograd Duma. No rapprochement with the other parties."

Lady Glencora: "But you can still do me a kindness. Go away, and leave me. Go to the sideboard, and then do not come back. You are doing me an injury while you remain with me."

Such was the rudimentary level of intelligence among the mass of local officials that almost any scrap of paper, so long as it carried a large stamp and seal, could be enough to impress them as a government document. One Englishman traveled throughout Russia with no other passport than his tailor's bill from Jermyn Street which he flaunted in the face of the local officials.... No official had dared to question it.

Gorky (1918): 'Petrograd is dying as a city... Everyone is leaving it--by foot, by horse, by train. Dead horses lie in the streets. The dogs eat them. The city is unbelievably dirty. The Moika and Fontanka [Rivers] are full of rubbish. This is the death of Russia.'

The few surviving photographs of the October Days clearly show the small size of the insurgent force. They depict a handful of Red Guards and sailors standing around half-deserted streets. None of the familiar images of a people's revolution --- crowds on the street, barricades, and fighting -- were in evidence.

There was no 'private Lenin' behind the politician. AQll biographies of the Bolshevik leader become unavoidably discussions of his political ideas and influence. Lenin's personal life was extraordinarily dull. He dressed and lived like a middle-aged provincial clerk, with precisely fixed hours for meals, sleep, work and leisure. He liked everything to be neat and orderly.

No one really tried to revive the monarchy. It is telling, for example, that none of the White leaders in the civil war embraced monarchism as a cause, despite the efforts of the many monarchists in their ranks. The White leaders all realized that politically it would be suicide for them to do so.

The Kadet politician V A Maklakov summed up the liberals' dilemma in a widely quoted article... He compared Russia to an automobile being driven down a steep and dangerous hill at uncontrollable speed by a mad chauffeur (Nicholas). Among the passengers are one's mother (Russia) plus competent drivers who recognize they are being driven to inevitable doom.

With the Russian Empire teetering on the brink of collapse, the tsarist regime responded to the crisis with its usual incompetency and obstinacy. Witte called it 'a mixture of cowardice, blindness and stupidity.' The basic problem was that Nicholas ... continued to fill his diary with terse and trivial notes on the weather, the company at tea and the number of birds he had shot that day.

The famine crisis of 1891 seemed to underline the backwardness of the peasantry. It showed that they were doomed to die out, both as individuals and as a class, under the wheels of economic development. The peasants were a relic of Russia's savage past -- its Aziatchina or Asiatic way of life -- which would inevitably be swept away by the progress of industry.

He went to bed at eight o'clock every evening, and was awakened at midnight, when he started to work. With nothing but the usual gallons of coffee to sustain him, he labored without stopping until eight o'clock in the morning. Then he paused briefly for a light meal, and after a respite of no more than 30 minutes he went back to work again, continuing until four in the afternoon.

As he thought of his grandfather he almost broke his umbrella by the vehemence with which he struck it against the pavement. What right could an ignorant old fool like that have to live for ever, keeping the possession of a property which he could not use, and ruining those who were to come after him?

But Burgo never reflected. The Fitzgeralds never reflected till they were nearer forty than thirty, and then people began to think worse of them than they had thought before.