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Top 25 Stephen Kotkin Quotes (2025 Update)

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “This break is a prelude to war, which should, in light of the low level of USSR military technology and internal political and economic difficulties caused by a war, finish off Bolshevism once and for all.”47.”

1. “This break is a prelude to war, which should, in light of the low level of USSR military technology and internal political and economic difficulties caused by a war, finish off Bolshevism once and for all.”47.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “What we designate modernity was not something natural or automatic. It involved a set of difficult-to-attain attributes – mass production, mass culture, mass politics – that the greatest powers mastered. Those states, in turn, forced other countries to attain modernity as well, or suffer the consequences, including defeat in war and possible colonial conquest.”

2. “What we designate modernity was not something natural or automatic. It involved a set of difficult-to-attain attributes – mass production, mass culture, mass politics – that the greatest powers mastered. Those states, in turn, forced other countries to attain modernity as well, or suffer the consequences, including defeat in war and possible colonial conquest.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “If during the wild rumors of 1914–17, the imagined treason of the tsarist court to the Germans had never been real, in 1918, the abject sellout to the Germans by the Bolsheviks was all too real. The August 27 treaty was a worse capitulation than Brest-Litovsk, and one that Lenin voluntarily sought. He was bribing his way to what he hoped was safety from German overthrow as well as the right to call upon German help against attempted Entente overthrow.”

3. “If during the wild rumors of 1914–17, the imagined treason of the tsarist court to the Germans had never been real, in 1918, the abject sellout to the Germans by the Bolsheviks was all too real. The August 27 treaty was a worse capitulation than Brest-Litovsk, and one that Lenin voluntarily sought. He was bribing his way to what he hoped was safety from German overthrow as well as the right to call upon German help against attempted Entente overthrow.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Most rightists wanted an autocracy without asterisk – that is, a mystical unity of monarch and folk – and they rejected anything more than a consultative Duma, but the autocrat himself had created the Duma. This.”

4. “Most rightists wanted an autocracy without asterisk – that is, a mystical unity of monarch and folk – and they rejected anything more than a consultative Duma, but the autocrat himself had created the Duma. This.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “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.”

5. “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.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “In 1904, Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish-born revolutionary who would not meet Lenin for three more years, condemned his vision of organization as “military ultra-centralism.” Trotsky, who sided with Martov, compared Lenin to the Jesuitical Catholic Abbe Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes – suspicious toward other people, fanatically attached to the idea, inclined to be dictator while claiming to put down supposedly ubiquitous sedition.”

6. “In 1904, Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish-born revolutionary who would not meet Lenin for three more years, condemned his vision of organization as “military ultra-centralism.” Trotsky, who sided with Martov, compared Lenin to the Jesuitical Catholic Abbe Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes – suspicious toward other people, fanatically attached to the idea, inclined to be dictator while claiming to put down supposedly ubiquitous sedition.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Rancid horse penises, sold as meat at the company store, triggered the walkout.”

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

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “More than anyone he had brought the USSR into being.”

8. “More than anyone he had brought the USSR into being.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “The Cheka relied on its fearsome reputation. Pravda carried reports of Cheka victims being flayed alive, impaled, scalped, crucified, tied to planks that were pushed slowly into roaring furnaces or into containers of boiling water. In winter, the Cheka was said to pour water over naked prisoners, creating ice statues, while some prisoners were said to have their necks twisted to such a degree their heads came off.107 True or not, such tales contributed to the Cheka mystique.”

9. “The Cheka relied on its fearsome reputation. Pravda carried reports of Cheka victims being flayed alive, impaled, scalped, crucified, tied to planks that were pushed slowly into roaring furnaces or into containers of boiling water. In winter, the Cheka was said to pour water over naked prisoners, creating ice statues, while some prisoners were said to have their necks twisted to such a degree their heads came off.107 True or not, such tales contributed to the Cheka mystique.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Revolutions are like earthquakes: they are always being predicted, and sometimes they come.”

10. “Revolutions are like earthquakes: they are always being predicted, and sometimes they come.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “The Union of the Russian People helped invent a new style of right-wing politics – novel not just for Russia but for most of the world – a politics in a new key oriented toward the masses, public spaces, and direct action, a fascism avant la lettre.”

11. “The Union of the Russian People helped invent a new style of right-wing politics – novel not just for Russia but for most of the world – a politics in a new key oriented toward the masses, public spaces, and direct action, a fascism avant la lettre.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “If Mephistopheles climbed up the pulpit and read the Gospel, could anyone be inspired by this prayer?” huffed a newspaper of Germany’s outflanked liberals.”

12. “If Mephistopheles climbed up the pulpit and read the Gospel, could anyone be inspired by this prayer?” huffed a newspaper of Germany’s outflanked liberals.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Pitiless class warfare formed the core of Lenin’s thought – the.”

13. “Pitiless class warfare formed the core of Lenin’s thought – the.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “The goal of the cobbler, Jughashvili continued, without mentioning his father, Beso, by name, was to accumulate capital and reopen his own business. But eventually, the “petit-bourgeois” cobbler realized he would never accumulate the capital and was in fact a proletarian. “A change in the consciousness of the cobbler,” Jughashvili concluded, “followed a change in his material circumstances.”

14. “The goal of the cobbler, Jughashvili continued, without mentioning his father, Beso, by name, was to accumulate capital and reopen his own business. But eventually, the “petit-bourgeois” cobbler realized he would never accumulate the capital and was in fact a proletarian. “A change in the consciousness of the cobbler,” Jughashvili concluded, “followed a change in his material circumstances.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Modernity, in other words, was not a sociological process – moving from “traditional” to “modern” society – but a geopolitical process: a matter of acquiring what it took to join the great powers, or fall victim to them.47.”

15. “Modernity, in other words, was not a sociological process – moving from “traditional” to “modern” society – but a geopolitical process: a matter of acquiring what it took to join the great powers, or fall victim to them.47.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Many rightist movements, refraining from hyperinflammatory rhetoric or arming vigilante “brotherhoods” to combat leftists and Jews and assassinate public figures, were considerably less volatile than the Union of the Russian People.”

16. “Many rightist movements, refraining from hyperinflammatory rhetoric or arming vigilante “brotherhoods” to combat leftists and Jews and assassinate public figures, were considerably less volatile than the Union of the Russian People.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Still, Lenin personally also forced through the deportation in fall 1922 of theologians, linguists, historians, mathematicians, and other intellectuals on two chartered German ships, dubbed the Philosophers’ Steamers. GPU notes on them recorded: “knows a foreign language,” “uses irony.”128.”

17. “Still, Lenin personally also forced through the deportation in fall 1922 of theologians, linguists, historians, mathematicians, and other intellectuals on two chartered German ships, dubbed the Philosophers’ Steamers. GPU notes on them recorded: “knows a foreign language,” “uses irony.”128.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Even skeptical emigres clued in to OGPU methods wanted to believe their homeland could somehow be seized back from the godless, barbaric Bolsheviks, and speculated endlessly about a Napoleon figure to lead a patriotic movement, mentioning most often Mikhail Tukhachevsky:.”

18. “Even skeptical emigres clued in to OGPU methods wanted to believe their homeland could somehow be seized back from the godless, barbaric Bolsheviks, and speculated endlessly about a Napoleon figure to lead a patriotic movement, mentioning most often Mikhail Tukhachevsky:.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “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.”

19. “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.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Nor would he condemn democracy outright, allowing that it might be appropriate for some countries. Still, he argued that democracy would bring disintegration to Russia, which needed “firm authority.”

20. “Nor would he condemn democracy outright, allowing that it might be appropriate for some countries. Still, he argued that democracy would bring disintegration to Russia, which needed “firm authority.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “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.”

21. “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.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Scholars who write of Moscow facing an “uncooperative world economy” have it exactly backward.”

22. “Scholars who write of Moscow facing an “uncooperative world economy” have it exactly backward.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “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.”

23. “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.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Fulfillment of Central Committee directives became Stalin’s mantra, and suspicion of non-fulfillment, his obsession.”

24. “Fulfillment of Central Committee directives became Stalin’s mantra, and suspicion of non-fulfillment, his obsession.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “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.”

25. “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.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Still more confounding to the regime, rural conflict was turning out to be not class based but mostly generational and gender based; the regime indirectly admitted as much by complaining that what it called the middle and even poor peasants were “under the sway” of the kulaks.144.”

26. “Still more confounding to the regime, rural conflict was turning out to be not class based but mostly generational and gender based; the regime indirectly admitted as much by complaining that what it called the middle and even poor peasants were “under the sway” of the kulaks.144.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “In other words, the Germans were continuing to place a large bet on Bolshevism, while at the same time containing it and extracting advantage.”

27. “In other words, the Germans were continuing to place a large bet on Bolshevism, while at the same time containing it and extracting advantage.”

— Stephen Kotkin

Stephen Kotkin Quote: “Entente hostility toward Soviet Russia, in other words, no more caused Bolshevik Western antagonism than Entente accommodation would have caused a friendly, hands-off Bolshevik disposition.”

28. “Entente hostility toward Soviet Russia, in other words, no more caused Bolshevik Western antagonism than Entente accommodation would have caused a friendly, hands-off Bolshevik disposition.”

— Stephen Kotkin

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