Alone Quote by Norman Davies

Stalin didn't write any memoirs. He was too secretive. He was afraid people might read them.

— Jonathan Lynn

“Practically all human literature deals with the present and the past; when literature tries to describe the future, it at once ceases to be…

— Francis Mccullagh

“The Party justified its “dictatorship” through purity of faith. Their Scriptures were the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, regarded as a “scientific” truth. Since ideology was…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

Under Stalin, artists weren't dissidents; all they hoped was to survive and write.

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

“Once in power, Stalin’s campaign to succeed Lenin required a legitimate heroic career which he did not possess because of his experience in what…

— Simon Sebag Montefiore

Anyway, the way political history is passed down is influenced and spoiled by the closeness of the writers to the political figures that they're…

— Raymond Pettibon

“Lenin turned to page 2 of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. There, a short report informed of a revolution in Petrograd. Lenin, too, looked u…

— China Miéville

However much an ideologue tries to bury [Lenin] beneath a proof by historical analysis, there is always this one man standing their on the…

— Louis Althusser

The book that really, really shaped my politics and has forever is Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon," which is a novel based on terrible…

— Nat Hentoff

“Lenin only believes in the revolution and in the virtue of expediency.'One must be prepared for every sacrifice, to use, if necessary, every stratagem,…

— albert camus

“The great writer was mortally afraid of the rising generation of young revolutionaries, and imagining, through his ignorance of things, that they held the…

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Ivanov had been a party member since 1902. Back then he had tried to write stories in the manner of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, or…

— Roberto Bolaño