historian quotes

• Conditions


  • July Days 1917
  • 'Decrease in Bolsheviks morale and damaged Lenin's reputation as a revolutionary leader' - Fitzpatrick
• Methods


  • About Trotsky (2 perspectives)
  • 'He was no good as a strategist' - Volkogonov
  • 'He had failures but his organization and inspiration helped a great deal in the civil war'
• Consolidation


  • Mussolini Education
  • 'Not one of the most successful examples of indoctrination' - Lee
• Treatment of Opposition


  • Deaths due to People's Courts
  • Around 2 million - J.A.G Roberts
  • 'The real number is hard to know as Mao had publicly criticized the killings in 1951 so local officials would conceal the numbers' - Yang Kuisong
  • Mussolini use of terror
  • 'Police harassment and surveillance became continuous and habitual' - Philip Short
  • 'Fascist regime used terror but definitely wasn't based on terror' - Cassel
  • 'Repressiveness was essential to Fascism' - Philip Short
• Foreign Policy Impact on Maintenance

  • Mussolini
  • 'Needed war to keep Fascism alive' - Martin Blinkhorn
  • 'Internal consolidation was a prerequisite for foreign conquest, and the opposite way around' - MacGregor Knox
  • 'Broad support particularly in time of great success in foreign policy' - C.Ipsen
  • 'Claims of totalitarianism were laughable' - Martin Clark
  • 'Peace is absurd' - Muss
  • 'Nationalist Fascism favoring an aggressive foreign policy' - De Grand
• Economic Policies


  • Mussolini
  • 'The whole wheat policy made no economic sense, it was propaganda just like everything else he did' - Martin Clark
  • 'I shall defend the italian lira till my last breath' - Muss
• Political Policies


  • 100 flowers campaign
  • 'Was genuinely constructive' - Philip Short
  • 'As a result of confusion within the CCP' - Jonathan Spence
  • 'Break down the opponent's into small Hungarian incidents, all to be dealt with separately' - Mao
  • Red Guards
  • 'We need more monkeys to disrupt the palace' - Mao
  • 'Go up to the mountains and down to the villages' (re-education) - Mao
• Social Policies


  • Youth - Mao
  • Gave the youth 'the right to bombard the Headquarters'
  • 'Political power grows from the bottom of the barrel of a gun' - Mao
  • The Church - Muss
  • 'God doesn't exist' - Muss
• Women


  • Mao
  • 'Double burden' - Dikotter
  • Mussolini
  • Gaetano Salvemini called the pressure put on women's appearances as 'Battle for Fat'
  • 'Nothing new in the treatment of women, fitted perfectly with Italian traditions' - John Pallard
  • 'Intellectual women are a monstrosity' - Muss
• Minorities


  • Muss - South Tyrol
  • 'Present the world with a truly new man, homo fascistus' (Italianization)
  • Muss - Jews
  • 'Cut from the same cloth as the rest of Fascism's final costume' (anti-semitism) - Bernadini
  • 'The racial purity of the nation is clearly absurd' - Muss
  • 'Need to reduce the dispropriate number of jews in public life' - Muss
  • 'The Jews are the most tenacious enemy of Christianity' (but church defended them) - L'Osservatore Romano, Vatican City Newspaper
• Authoritarian Control


  • Mao
  • 'Unchallenged by the tough figures around him' - Jonathan Fenby
  • 'The thoughts of Chairman Mao are always correct' - Lin Biao
  • 'But when he reasserted himself, nobody could resist him' - Jonathan Fenby
  • 'He wielded powers equalled by only the most awesome of Chinese emperors' - Philip Short
  • 'All of China was a stage, with the people performer's in this extravaganza for Mao' - Jeff Stewart
  • 'He wanted the nation brain dead in order to carry out his purge' - Jung Chang
  • 'He was ruthless to anyone he believed was conspiring against the revolution' - Jack Gray
  • 'They were in many ways beneficial to Chinese society…paved the way for great economic and political strides' (about GLF and CR) - Lee Feignon
  • Muss
  • 'Society was dominated by Fascist slogans' - Tannenbaum
  • 'Till 1936 most swallowed the propaganda, Duce was popular as it made sense' - C.Ipsen
  • 'Most were fed up with Mussolini by 1939, but couldn't find a way to overthrow the government' - Leeds
  • 'Opposition was neutralized but never destroyed' - Leeds
  • 'Never penetrated the roots of Italian society' - Leeds
  • 'Muss didn't create consensus, new civilisation or totalitarian state' - C.Ipsen
• Blackett: 'nothing to do with WW2, but everything to do with the cold war'
• 2nd United Front


  Trying to bleed the Soviet's white
• Stalin: 'A call to war with the Soviet Union'
• Marshall: 'our policy isn't against any country, but to fight poverty and hunger etc.'
• Stalin reacted defensively to initiatives from the Western Powers


  Truman unsympathetic handling of USSR and refusal of serious security led to the outbreak of WW2
• Stalin's policies triggered the Cold War
• Truman was standing up against the Soviet aggression
• Stalin's intervention in Korea was most disastrous Cold War gamble
• Joseph Bech: 'having been raped twice, we could no longer pretend to be a virgin'
• Deng: 'to get rich is glorious'
• Luxembourg is arguably Europe's most unabashedly pro-American country
• China's people's communes created a huge waste of natural resources and labor as well as environmental pollution
• NSC-68 is one of the key documents of the Cold War
• The Marshall Plan took advantage, wanted to rebuild Europe in image of US