“You are wrong if you think that the Communists are enamoured of violence. They would be very pleased to drop violent methods if the ruling class agreed to give way to the working class. But the experience of history speaks against such an assumption.”
Stalin and Hegel
“Every new generation encounters definite conditions already existing, ready-made, when that generation was born. And great people are worth anything at all only to the extent that they are able correctly to understand these conditions, to understand how to change them.”
“Every kind of falsehood and truth is present in public opinion, but it is the prerogative of the great man to discover the truth within it. He who expresses the will of his age, tells it what its will is, and accomplishes this will, is the great man of the age.”
G. W. F. Hegel, 1820. Philosophy of Right. Translated by S. W. Dyde. [1]
About Stalin
“By the way, as I was convinced during the war, J.V. Stalin was not at all the kind of man before whom one could not post sharp questions and with whom one could not argue, and even firmly defend one's own point of view. If someone says differently, then I tell you directly - their affirmations are not truthful.”
General Zhukov in his memoirs[2]
References
- ↑ Comparison taken from this Redsails article
https://redsails.org/on-hegel/ - ↑ Original quote in Russian:
Кстати сказать, как я убедился во время войны, И. В. Сталин вовсе не был таким человеком, перед которым нельзя было ставить острые вопросы и с которым нельзя было бы спорить и даже твердо отстаивать свою точку зрения. Если кто-либо утверждает обратное, прямо скажу - их утверждения не верны.