The Rise and Fall of Stalin Quotes

“Comrades, a country is not governed by those who elect delegates to parliament according to the bourgeois system, or to the Congress of Soviets according to the Soviet system. No, a country is in fact governed by those who have really mastered the executive apparatus of the state, by those who direct this apparatus.”
― Robert Payne, The Rise and Fall of Stalin

“everything seems to have been devised to give men pleasure.”
― Robert Payne, The Rise and Fall of Stalin

“By 1937 Stalin had reached the stage when murder had become as habitual as shaving or eating. Three or four times a week the death lists compiled by Yezhov at his orders would be presented to him, he would read through the lists casually, add his initials, and then forget about them. These lists did not comprise the names of a small number of high officials, but included hundreds and sometimes thousands of obscure people working inside and outside the government. In many cases the lists were mere formalities: the people had already been shot. These drab pages filled with names represented the only currency he recognized: they were his bills of trading in the endless terror he was visiting upon Russia. There is not the least doubt”
― Robert Payne, The Rise and Fall of Stalin

“By 1937 Stalin had reached the stage when murder had become as habitual as shaving or eating. Three or four times a week the death lists compiled by Yezhov at his orders would be presented to him, he would read through the lists casually, add his initials, and then forget about them. These lists did not comprise the names of a small number of high officials, but included hundreds and sometimes thousands of obscure people working inside and outside the government. In many cases the lists were mere formalities: the people had already been shot. These drab pages filled with names represented the only currency he recognized: they were his bills of trading in the endless terror he was visiting upon Russia. There”
― Robert Payne, The Rise and Fall of Stalin