Stalin Quotes

“created by others or by happenstance to one’s advantage, and Hitler turned out to be just such a master improviser:”
― Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

“the only constant in war was an absence of constants.”
― Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

“None of the military officers, most of whom had battlefield experience, would try to stop Stalin’s insanity. They were locked in Bolshevik ways of looking at the world, their own fear, and the grip of his person.”
― Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

“Throughout the four days of the Main Military Council gathering in the Kremlin, forty-two military men would take the floor; thirty-four of them would be arrested.”
― Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941

“After all, Marx had never advocated mass murder, but freedom. Nowhere did he say there should be collective farms formed by secret police coercion, mass deportations to frozen wastes, terrible famine. Of course, Marx had insisted that wage labor was “wage slavery,” private capital “exploitation” and “alienation,” the market “chaos,” and therefore that, to achieve lasting abundance and freedom, capitalism had to be “transcended.” The tragedy began unfolding with the very invention of “capitalism.” Once markets and private property were named and blamed as the source of evil, statization would be the consequence.”
― Stephen Kotkin, Stalin: Waiting for Hitler 1929-1941