In war, where both success and failure are repaid by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are… — Leon Trotsky
In war, where both success and failure are repaid by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are subject to execution. This is inhuman, but no one ever considered war a school of humanity.
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In a revolutionary period, the party which has been thrown from power, which does not reconcile itself with the stability of the ruling class, and which proves this by its desperate struggle against the latter, cannot be terrorized by the threat of imprisonment, as it does not believe in its duration. It is just this simple but decisive fact that explains the widespread recourse to shooting in a civil war.
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It could and must, be explained that in the civil war we destroyed the White Guards in order that they should not destroy the workers. Consequently, our problem is not the destruction of human life, but its preservation. But as we have to struggle for the preservation of human life with arms in our hands, it leads to the destruction of human life - a puzzle the dialectical secret of which was explained by old Hegel, without reckoning other still more ancient sages.
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