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date: 18 January 2025

Joseph Stalin 1879–1953
Soviet dictator 

  1. I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.
    said in 1923; Boris Bazhanov The Memoirs of Stalin's Former Secretary (1992); see Stoppard
  2. The State is an instrument in the hands of the ruling class, used to break the resistance of the adversaries of that class.
    Foundations of Leninism (1924) section 4/6
  3. There are various forms of production: artillery, automobiles, lorries. You also produce ‘commodities’, ‘works’, ‘products’. Such things are highly necessary. Engineering things. For people's souls. ‘Products’ are highly necessary too. ‘Products’ are very important for people's souls. You are engineers of human souls.
    speech to writers at Gorky's house, 26 October 1932; see Gorky, Kennedy
  4. The Pope! How many divisions has he got?
    on being asked to encourage Catholicism in Russia by way of conciliating the Pope, 13 May 1935
    W. S. Churchill The Gathering Storm (1948) ch. 8; see Napoleon I
  5. [Gratitude] is a sickness suffered by dogs.
    Nikolai Tolstoy Stalin's Secret War (1981)
  6. One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic.
    attributed; first attributed to Stalin in the form ‘If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics’ in Washington Post 20 January 1947; see Tucholsky