40 Quotes About Stalinism

It’s ridiculous to talk about freedom in a society dominated by huge corporations. What kind of freedom is there inside a corporation? They’re totalitarian institutions - you take orders from above and maybe give them to people below you. There’s about as much freedom as under Stalinism.

...you are strong only as long as you don't deprive people of everything. For a person you've taken everything from is no longer in your power. He's free all over again.

What we have is not a direct comparison of workers’ performance or output, but a comparison between the audited representation of that performance and output. Inevitably, a short- circuiting occurs, and work becomes geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of the work itself. (...) What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement.

If Stalin gives you a love advice, it has to succeed.

[С]тарикам обычно доверяют намного больше, чем молодым. Их слушают внимательно, как свидетелей истории. Старики, жившие в эпоху Сталина, являются доказательством существования Сталина. Их слушают, открыв рот.

Armor-piercing shells for iron-heads have not yet been invented! In arguing with them, you wear yourself out, unless you accept in advance that the argument is simply a game, a jolly pastime.

Because the horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It's that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great."[Six Questions for Slavoj Žižek, Harper's Magazine, November 11, 2011]

Similar to how in Nazism 'Jewish Bolshevism' turned out to be the flip side of a 'Jewish plutocracy,' in late Stalinism Jews were subjected to defamation as both radical rightists (counter-revolutionaries) and radical leftists (modernists).

The thoughts of a prisoner—they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring. Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress? Would he have any luck in the dispensary that evening? Would they out Buinovsky in the cells? And how did Tsezar get his hands on that warm vest?