"The bitterest enemies of socialism sometimes do it a service by the excessive zeal of their “exposures”. They bear down on the very things that deserve sympathy and emulation. They open the people’s eyes to the infamy of the bourgeoisie by the very nature of their attacks."

"At the present moment it is impossible to remain loyal to Marxism, to remain loyal to the revolution unless insurrection is treated as an art."

"At the moment we must campaign not so much directly against Kerensky, as indirectly against him, namely, by demanding a more and more active, truly revolutionary war against Kornilov."

"The law on libel in the press has virtually been suspended in Russia. Slanderers, especially those contributing to the bourgeois papers, have been granted complete freedom."

A Letter to the Central Committee and the Petrograd And Moscow Committees Of The R.S.D.L.P.(B.). 

"The Socialist-Revolutionary Party has betrayed you, comrade peasants. It has betrayed the hovels and deserted to the palaces, if not the royal palaces, then those where the Cadets, those bitter enemies of the revolution, and particularly the peasant revolution, sit in the same government as the Chernovs, Peshekhonovs, and Avksentyevs."

"To be really revolutionary, the democrats of Russia today must march in very close alliance with the proletariat, supporting it in its struggle as the only thoroughly revolutionary class."

"After three years of war, efforts are still being made to feed the workers with the emptiest promises: “In Stockholm they are going” to renounce national unity."

"The whole political system of Russia was reflected in the incident of August 18 like the sun in a pool of water: the Bonapartist government, the death penalty, the criminal law, the coating of these “pleasant” (for the provocateurs) pills by just the kind of phrases that Louis Napoleon used to give out about equality, fraternity, liberty, the honour and prestige of the country, the traditions of the Great Revolution, the suppression of anarchy."

"He hears the voice of approbation
Not in the dulcet sounds of praise,
But in the savage cries of indignation!"

Written in the summer of 1917, in the heat of the Russian Revolution, Lenin’s State and Revolution is a key work of Marxism. Here, Lenin explains that, stripped of all non-essentials, the state is in the final analysis “groups of armed men”: the army and the police, in defence of the ruling class.

"You have to purposely shut your eyes not to see how, before your very eyes, Bonapartism is growing in Russia..."

A document by Lenin on the tasks of the working class in the 1917 Revolution. First published September 1917 as a pamphlet.

"To believe these rumours, to support them directly or indirectly, would mean, on the part of the Bolsheviks, betraying the cause of the revolution."

"We have decided to build a Third International, and we must do so in face of all difficulties. Not a single step backward to deals with the social-imperialists and deserters from socialism!"