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1 " ...the attitude of Gorky and his paper. He had returned to Russia early in 1914, taken a pacifist line on the the outbreak of war, but had pursued it with a restraint which protected him from most of the obloquy poured on others of similar views After the February Revolution of 1917 he had regarded the Bolsheviks as merely one among a number of progressive parties, and it was not unexpected that in October he should warn about the future. Now, he not only printed the Zinoviev-Kamenev statement but also a leading article in which he said: 'Ever more persistent rumors are spreading to the effect that on 2 November a Bolshevik rising will take place; in other words, that the hideous scenes of 16 to 18 July may be repeated. That means that once more there will appear motor lorries overfilled with men with rifles and revolvers in their trembling hands, and these rifles will shoot at shop windows, at people, at random. They will shoot only because the men armed with them will try to kill their fear. All dark instincts of the crowd irritated by disorder, by the falsehood and filth of politics, will flare up and ooze forth poisonous malice, hatred, vengeance. People will be killing one another, in their inability to destroy their own bestial stupidity. The unorganized crowd will creep out into the streets, hardly understanding what it wants, while under its cover, adventurers, thieves, [and] professional assassins will set out to "create the history of the Russian revolution". In brief, there will be repeated that bloody, senseless slaughter, which we have already witnessed, and which has undermined through our whole land the moral importance of the revolution, and has shaken its cultural meaning. "
― , Lenin
2 " Referring to Marx's thesis the the proletariat had no fatherland, he said that the epoch of national wars was over, and that the current struggle was an imperialist war. "
3 " Among those who trimmed their political principles after the outbreak of the war was Katusky, who particularly aroused Lenin's ire. 'I hate Katusky and at the moment I despise him more than anyone [he wrote to Shlyapnikov in October]: a beastly, rotten, smug, hypocrite. Oh no, - they say- nothing has happened, no principles have been violated; every one was right in protecting the Fatherland; internationalism (kindly note) consists in the workers of all countries shooting at each other in the name of the "Defence of the Fatherland". "
4 " Lenin's reaction to this defence of what he called the 'predatory treaties concluded by the tsarist clique and the "Allied" bankers was predictable. 'The cards are on the table...[he wrote]. Short and clear. War to a decisive victory. The alliance with the British and French bankers is sacred...The new Note of the Provisional Government will pour oil on the flames. It can only arouse a bellicose spirit in Germany. It will help Wilhelm the Brigand to go on deceiving "his own" workers and soldiers and drag them into a war "to a finish". Fight- because we want to plunder. Die in your tens of thousands every day - because "we"... have not yet got our share of the spoils. "
5 " Were there mistakes? Yes, there were. Only those who don't act don't make mistakes. But to organize well - that's a difficult task.' (Lenin to the All-Russian Conference of Bolsheviks on 24 April, 1917.) "
6 " Lenin was buttressed throughout his life by a moral justification which he outlined in Krasnyi Mech (The Red Sword), a weekly periodical of the Political Department of the Special Corps of Ukranian Cheka Troops. 'For us there do not, and cannot, exist the old systems of morality and "humanity" invented by the bourgeoisie for the old purpose of oppressing and exploiting the "lower classes" [he wrote]. Our morality is new, our humanity is absolute, for it rests on the bright ideal of destroying all oppression and coercion. To us, all is permitted, for we are the first in the world to raise the sword not in the name of enslaving and oppressing anyone, but ibn the name of freeing all from bondage....Blood? Let there be blood, if it alone can turn the grey-white-and-black banner of the old piratical world to a scarlet hue, for only the complete and final death of that world will save us from the return of the old jackals. "
7 " Few men have gained power, or retained it, by using, in Lenin's words, "the methods of a finishing school for young ladies. "
8 " activities, "
