Josef Stalin Zitate: 40 Zitate eines prägenden und umstrittenen Leaders, die noch heute kontrovers diskutiert werden

„In der Sowjetischen Armee erfordert es mehr Courage zurückzuweichen als vorzurücken.“

„Der Staat ist eine Maschine in den Händen der herrschenden Klasse zur Unterdrückung des Widerstands ihrer Klassengegner. In dieser Hinsicht unterscheidet sich die Diktatur des Proletariats im Grunde genommen durch nichts von der Diktatur jeder anderen Klasse, denn der proletarische Staat ist eine Maschine zur Niederhaltung der Bourgeoisie.“

„Ein Toter ist sicher eine Katastrophe, aber 100.000 Tote sind nur eine Zahl für die Statistik.“

Werke Band 6, Dietz 1952, S. 101 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=NAMhAQAAMAAJ&q=maschine, "Über die Grundlagen des Leninismus, IV. Die Diktatur des Proletariats"

„Der Westen wird Westdeutschland vereinnahmen, und wir werden Ostdeutschland zu unserem Staat machen.“

„Man kann nicht zugleich Mörder und Genius sein. Einerlei, welche Motive Stalin leiteten, die Hinrichtung Tausender war ein fürchterliches Verbrechen.“

„Stalin ist zu grob, und dieser Fehler, der in unserer Mitte und im Verkehr zwischen uns Kommunisten erträglich ist, kann in der Funktion des Generalsekretärs nicht geduldet werden. Deshalb schlage ich den Genossen vor, sich zu überlegen, wie man Stalin ablösen könnte, und jemand anderen an diese Stelle zu setzen, der sich in jeder Hinsicht von dem Genossen Stalin nur durch einen Vorzug unterscheidet, nämlich dadurch, daß er toleranter, loyaler, höflicher und den Genossen gegenüber aufmerksamer, weniger launenhaft usw. ist.“

Nikita Chruschtschow, Chruschtschow erinnert sich, Vorrede

„Wenn ich einmal nicht mehr bin, werden euch die Imperialisten ersäufen wie einen Wurf junger Katzen.“

Lenin, Brief an den XII. Parteitag - Nachschrift vom 4. Januar 1923

„Es ist allgemein anerkannt, dass keine Wissenschaft ohne Kampf der Meinungen, ohne Freiheit der Kritik sich entwickeln und gedeihen kann.“

„Stalin war, das muss sachlich festgestellt werden, eine sehr große Persönlichkeit, der geniale Züge nicht abzusprechen sind. Politisch war er ein eiskalter und kluger Führer der Sowjetunion, der unter schwierigsten Umständen stets die Interessen seines Landes und seiner Partei vor Augen hatte…“

Werke Band 15, "Über den Marxismus in der Sprachwissenschaft

Otto von Habsburg, Damals begann unsere Zukunft, S. 133

„Ich bin das Volk!“

„Es ist allgemein anerkannt, dass keine Wissenschaft ohne Kampf der Meinungen, ohne Freiheit der Kritik sich entwickeln und gedeihen kann. Aber diese allgemein anerkannte Regel wurde in unverfrorenster Weise ignoriert und mit Füßen getreten. Es bildete sich eine abgekapselte Gruppe unfehlbarer leitender Persönlichkeiten heraus, die, nachdem sie sich gegen jede Möglichkeit einer Kritik gesichert hatte, eigenmächtig zu wirtschaften und ihr Unwesen zu treiben begann.“

„Und der große Lenin erleuchtet uns den Weg, Uns erzog Stalin zur Volkstreue.“

Der Marxismus und die Fragen der Sprachwissenschaft [1950]. Werke, Band 15, Dortmund 1979, S. 126

„Ich brauch auch so’n Teil!“

Nationalhymne nach Korrekturen Stalins, nach Dimitri Wolkogonow: Stalin: Triumph und Tragödie. Aus dem Russischen von Vesna Jovanoska. S. 265 books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=ISB3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT265

„Es gibt einen dogmatischen Marxismus und einen schöpferischen Marxismus. Ich stehe auf dem Boden des letzteren.“

„Warum hast du mich so hart geschlagen?“

G. F. Alexandrow, M. P. Galaktionow, W. S. Krushkow, M. B. Mitin, W. D. Motschalow, P. N. Pospelow: J. W. Stalin - Kurze Lebensbeschreibung, Marx-Engels-Lenin-Institut, Moskau 1947

„Wißt ihr, Genossen«, sagte Stalin, »was ich über diese Frage denke? Ich meine, daß es völlig unwichtig ist, wer und wie man in der Partei abstimmen wird; überaus wichtig ist nur das eine, nämlich wer und wie man die Stimmen zählt.“

„Natürlich wird die Theorie gegenstandslos, wenn sie nicht mit der revolutionären Praxis verknüpft wird, genauso wie die Praxis blind wird, wenn sie ihren Weg nicht durch die revolutionäre Theorie beleuchtet.“

Boris Baschanow: Ich war Stalins Sekretär. [Aus d. Russ. von Josef Hahn] Ullstein 1977. S. 68 books.google https://books.google.de/books?hl=de&id=Om_NAAAAMAAJ&dq=z%C3%A4hlt "Знаете, товарищи, - говорит Сталин, - что я думаю по этому поводу: я считаю, что совершенно неважно, кто и как будет в партии голосовать; но вот что чрезвычайно важно, это - кто и как будет считать голоса". - Борис Бажанов: Воспоминания бывшего секретаря Сталина, ГЛАВА 5. http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/BAZHANOW/stalin.txt

„Du bringen eine Flaschiani Banani von Wodka, oder ich machen sorgen dafür, dass du seien eingeschlossen mit Krokodil in Nil und angebunden an Seite vorne von Penis.“

Über die Grundlagen des Leninismus: III Die Theorie. marxists.org https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/referenz/stalin/1924/grundlagen/kap3.htm

„… und morgen ist Titanin dran!“

„Man muss die überlebte Vorstellung fallen lassen, dass nur Europa uns den Weg weisen könne. Es gibt einen dogmatischen Marxismus und einen schöpferischen Marxismus. Ich stehe auf dem Boden des letzteren.“

„Schaffte es nicht einmal, sich zu erschießen“

Erwiderung an Preobrashenski zur Frage des 9. Punktes der Resolution „Über die politische Lage“, 3. August 1917, auf dem VI. Parteitag der SDAPR (Bolschewiki). Werke. Band 3, Verlag Roter Morgen, Hamburg 1971], S. 101

“Comrades, Red Army and Red Navy men, commanders and political instructors, men and women guerrillas! The whole world is looking to you as a force capable of destroying the brigand hordes of German invaders. The enslaved peoples of Europe under the yoke of the German invaders are looking to you as their liberators. A great mission of liberation has fallen to your lot. Be worthy of this mission! The war you are waging is a war of liberation, a just war.”

als sein Sohn gefangen genommen wurde
Quelle: https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/stalins-sohn-wie-jakow-dschugaschwili-im-kz-starb-a-1098571.html

Josef Stalin: Zitate auf Englisch

“The press must grow day in and day out — it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon.”

Speech on the 24th Anniversary of the Revolution
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“Is it possible, then, to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the German invaders? The enemy is not as strong as some terror-stricken pseudo-intellectuals picture him. The devil is not as terrible as he is painted.”

Speech at The Twelfth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) (19 April 1923) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/TC23.html#s2 Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“We are in favour of the withering away of the state, and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents the most powerful and mighty of all forms of the state which have existed up to the present day. The highest development of the power of the state, with the object of preparing the conditions of the withering away of the state: that is the Marxist formula. Is it "contradictory"? Yes, it is "contradictory."”

Speech on the 24th Anniversary of the Revolution http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IGbjPqFFvA (7 November 1941) Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost.”

But this contradiction is a living thing and wholly reflects the Marxist dialectic. Address to the 16th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (1930) Quoted in: Alfred B. Evans, Soviet Marxism-Leninism: The Decline of an Ideology pg. 39 https://books.google.com/books?id=ezGGPIze4ZYC&pg=PA39&dq=withering+away+of+the+state+stalin&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAWoVChMIz_WZ46adxwIVR5YeCh1g7AKD#v=onepage&q=withering%20away%20of%20the%20state%20stalin&f=false Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“God's not unjust, he doesn't actually exist. We've been deceived. If God existed, he'd have made the world more just… I'll lend you a book and you'll see.”

Speech at The Seventh Enlarged Plenum of the E.C.C.I. (December 1926) http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/SEP26.html Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“In my opinion there are two seats of war danger. The first is in the Far East, in the zone of Japan. I have in mind the numerous statements made by Japanese military men containing threats against other powers. The second seat is in the zone of Germany. It is hard to say which is the most menacing, but both exist and are active. Compared with these two principal seats of war danger, the Italian-Abyssinian war is an episode. At present, the Far Eastern seat of danger reveals the greatest activity. However, the centre of this danger may shift to Europe. This is indicated, for example, by the interview which Herr Hitler recently gave to a French newspaper. In this interview Hitler seems to have tried to say peaceful things, but he sprinkled his "peacefulness" so plentifully with threats against both France and the Soviet Union that nothing remained of his "peacefulness."”

A teenaged Stalin after reading The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin as quoted in Young Stalin (2007) by Simon Sebag Montefiore, p. 49
Contemporary witnesses

“Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx’s proletarian socialism logically follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism.”

You see, even when Herr Hitler wants to speak of peace he cannot avoid uttering threats. This is symptomatic. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1936/03/01.htmInterview Between J. Stalin and Roy Howard; March 1, 1936 Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“[The Albanians] seem to be rather backward and primitive people… they can be as faithful as a dog; that is one of the traits of the primitive. Our Chuvash were the same. The Russian tsars always used them for their bodyguards.”

Anarchism or Socialism (1906)

“Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period (we have the proletarian revolution in mind), when developed imperialism did not yet exist, in the period of the proletarians' preparation for revolution, in the period when the proletarian revolution was not yet an immediate practical inevitability. But Lenin, the disciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in the period of developed imperialism, in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets.”

Said to Edvard Kardelj (1947), as quoted in Vladimir Dedijer (1954), Tito Speaks, page 312
Contemporary witnesses

“Life has improved, comrades. Life has become more joyous.”

The Foundations of Leninism

“Why did you beat me so hard?”

In Russian: Жить стало лучше, товарищи. Жить стало веселее. Speech at the Conference of Stakhanovites http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/SCS35.html (17 November 1935) Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“I have no son named Yakov.”

to his mother in her later years. Her response was "That's why you turned out so well". Source: Edvard Radzinsky, p. 32
Contemporary witnesses

“e achievement and maintenance of the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible without a party which is strong by reason of its solidarity and iron discipline. But iron discipline in the Party is inconceivable without unity of will, without complete and absolute unity of action on the part of all members of the Party. This does not mean, of course, that the possibility of conflicts of opinion within the Party is thereby precluded. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and conflict of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that discipline must be "blind." On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline. But after a conflict of opinion has been closed, after criticism has been exhausted and a decision has been arrived at, unity of will and unity of action of all Party members are the necessary conditions without which neither Party unity nor iron discipline in the Party is conceivable.”

as quoted in Joseph Stalin: Dictator of the Soviet Union (2006) by Brenda Haugen, p. 11
Contemporary witnesses

“Strikes, boycott, parliamentarism, meetings and demonstrations are all good forms of struggle as means for preparing and organising the proletariat. But not one of these means is capable of abolishing existing inequality. All these means must be concentrated in one principal and decisive means; the proletariat must rise and launch a determined attack upon the bourgeoisie in order to destroy capitalism to its foundations. This principal and decisive means is the socialist revolution.”

Quelle: The Foundations of Leninism, Ch.8

“Before your eyes rises the hero of Gogol's story who, in a fit of aberration, imagined that he was the King of Spain. Such is the fate of all megalomaniacs.”

Anarchism or Socialism (1906)

“Bukharin's a swine and surely worse than a swine because he thinks it below his dignity to write a couple of lines.”

Proletariatis Brdzola August 1905, as quoted in Young Stalin (2007) by Simon Sebag Montefiore, p. 376
Contemporary witnesses

“You know, they are fooling us, there is no God.”

Bol'shevistskoe rukovodstvo. Perepiska 1912-1927, [Bolshevik Leadership, Correspondence 1912-1927], p. 90
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“One of Ivan the Terrible's mistakes was to overlook the five great feudal families. If he had annihilated those five families, there would definitely have been no Time of Troubles. But Ivan the Terrible would execute someone and then spend a long time repenting and praying. God got in his way in this matter. He ought to have been still more decisive!”

A teenaged Stalin to a fellow student while studying to become a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, as quoted in Landmarks in the Life of Stalin (1942) by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, p. 9
Contemporary witnesses

“God is on your side? Is He a Conservative? The Devil's on my side, he's a good Communist.”

Moskovskie novosti, no. 32, 7 August 1988
Contemporary witnesses

“The Pope! How many divisions has he got?”

Said to Winston Churchill in Tehran, November 1943, as quoted in Fallen Eagle: The Last Days of the Third Reich (1995) by Robin Cross, p. 21
Contemporary witnesses

“This leads to the conclusion, it is time to finish retreating. Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan. … Henceforth the solid law of discipline for each commander, Red Army soldier, and commissar should be the requirement — not a single step back without order from higher command.”

Said sarcastically to Pierre Laval in 1935, in response to being asked whether he could do anything with Russian Catholics to help Laval win favour with the Pope, to counter the increasing threat of Nazism; as quoted in The Second World War (1948) by Winston Churchill vol. 1, ch. 8, p. 105.
Contemporary witnesses

“I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.”

"The Order of the National Commissar for the Defense of the Soviet Union" (28 July 1942) Moscow http://www.stalingrad-info.com/order227.htm Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm.”

Said to Molotov in 1943, as quoted in Felix Chuev's 140 Conversations with Molotov Moscow, 1991.
Contemporary witnesses

“Tsar Alexander reached Paris.”

Clive Foss, The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption, London: Quercus Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1905204965 , p. 131
Contemporary witnesses

“For some people, four walls are three too many.”

Said to an American diplomat who remarked how grateful it must be to see Russian troops in Berlin. Quoted in Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger
Contemporary witnesses

“The Jews are not a nation!”

This seems to have originated with the Spanish military leader Juan Domingo de Monteverde, who, in Francisco de Miranda, a Transatlantic Life in the Age of Revolution (2003) by Karen Racine, p. 239, is quoted as having said: "four walls are three too many for a prison — you only need one for an execution."
Misattributed

“We must finally understand that of all the precious capital in the world, the most precious capital, the most decisive capital, is human beings […]. Cadres decide everything!”

As quoted in Stalin : A Biography (2004) by Robert Service, p. 156
Contemporary witnesses

“Having consolidated its power, and taking the lead of the peasantry, the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society.”

http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2495035?uid=3738776&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104844992271 A more accurate translation, with respect to the context, might read: "Cadres are the key to everything" In Russian: [...] из всех ценных капиталов, имеющихся в мире, самым ценным и самым решающим капиталом являются люди [...]. Кадры решают все! Address to the Graduates from the Red Army Academies http://marx2mao.com/Stalin/GRA35.html. (4 May 1935); Variant translation: Human resources solve all! Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews

“We do not want a single foot of foreign territory; but of our territory we shall not surrender a single inch to anyone.”

Problems of Leninism, August 1924 edition
The Foundations of Leninism