Quotes from Stephen Kotkin

Nothing is more powerful than a compelling story, especially in the framework of a revolution, which entails a struggle to create new symbols, new vocabularies, new ways of looking at the world, new identities, new myths.

Rancid horse penises, sold as meat at the company store, triggered the walkout.

And yet rather than accommodate and moderate student curiosity, for what was after all the best belles lettres and modern science, the theologians responded with interdiction and persecution, as if they had something to fear. In other words, it was less the circle than the seminary itself that was fomenting radicalism, albeit unwittingly.

But in no way should any of this be taken to mean the Bolsheviks established effective structures of governance. Far from it: the Bolshevik monopoly went hand in hand with administrative as well as societal chaos, which Lenin's extremism exacerbated, causing an ever-deepening crisis, which he cited as justification for his extremism.

Bolshevism's core convictions about capitalism and class warfare were held to be so incontrovertible that any and all means up to lying and summary executions were seen as not just expedient but morally necessary.

Fulfillment of Central Committee directives became Stalin's mantra, and suspicion of non-fulfillment, his obsession.

already done." Molotov bitingly asked Zinoviev if he and Kamenev had been "brave in October 1917?" Zinoviev reminded them that not just Trotsky but Bukharin had opposed Brest-Litovsk in 1918, to

But rather than citing the serious attitude of local officialdom, as before, he stressed how he had "wound everyone up, the way it's supposed to be done.

Stalin made history, rearranging the entire socioeconomic landscape of one sixth of the earth. Right through mass rebellion, mass starvation, cannibalism, the destruction of the country's livestock, and unprecedented political destabilization, Stalin did not flinch. Feints in the form of tactical retreats notwithstanding, he would keep going even when told to his face by officials in the inner regime that a catastrophe was unfolding—full speed ahead to socialism

Closed and gregarious, vindictive and solicitous, Stalin shatters any attempt to contain him within binaries. He was by inclination a despot who, when he wanted to be, was utterly charming. He was an ideologue who was flexibly pragmatic.

member parties were ordered to organize along Leninist lines to combat "petit-bourgeois deviation

Lenin "occasionally moaned quietly, a tremor ran through his body, at first I held his hot, damp hand, but then just watched as the towel turned red with blood, and the stamp of death settled on his deathly pallid face."31 The doctors applied artificial respiration. He died at 6:50 p.m.

Accident in history is rife; unintended consequences and perverse outcomes are the rule.

Even the package of attributes that we call modernity was a result not of some inherent sociological process, a move out of tradition, but of a vicious geopolitical competition in which a state had to match the other great powers in modern steel production, modern militaries, and a modern, mass-based political system

Revolution results not from determined crowds in the streets but from elite abandonment of the existing political order. The food demonstrations as well as strikes revealed that the autocratic regime had already hollowed out. Almost no one would defend it.

I don't understand how we can fight the Communist Party under the leadership of the Communist Party ... I don't understand why perestroika is being carried out by the same people who brought the country to the point where it needs perestroika.

This Asiatic pose was a side of Stalin almost no one saw.

Stalin's rudeness was in service to the cause. His rudeness was zeal

Almost all rightists believed that autocracy ipso facto ruled out opposition, which of course ruled out their own opposition.

Compared with the 20 million motorcars in the United States, cars and trucks in the Soviet Union numbered perhaps 5,500

Countries that are defeated by their enemies often rebuild. But the countries that are destroyed from within—that's really the end of the line.

These developments removed the immediate threat while exposing the regime's aggressive incompetence.

in a revolution, only revolutionaries can find their way.

Whether Stalin, out in Siberia, met with actual peasants, let alone large throngs of them, as did Stolypin, remains unclear.