“When the Russian Cadets and Kerensky launched a furious campaign against the Bolsheviks- especially after April 1917, and more particularly in June and July 1917- they “overdid” it. Millions of copies of bourgeois papers, shrieking in every key against the Bolsheviks, helped to induce the masses to appraise Bolshevism; and, apart from the newspapers, all public life was being permeated with discussions about Bolshevism just because of the “zeal” of the bourgeoisie. Now on an international scale the millionaires of all countries are behaving in a way that deserves our heartiest thanks. They are hounding Bolshevism with the same zeal as did Kerensky and Co.; they, too, are “overdoing” it and helping us just as Kerensky did. When the French bourgeoisie makes Bolshevism the central issue at the elections, and accuses the comparatively moderate or vacillating Socialists of being Bolsheviks; when the American bourgeoisie, having completely lost its head, seizes thousands and thousands of people on suspicion of Bolshevism, creates an atmosphere of panic and broadcasts stories of Bolshevik plots; when the British bourgeoisie- the most “solid” in the world- despite all its wisdom and experience, commits incredible follies, founds richly endowed “anti-Bolshevik societies,” creates a special literature on Bolshevism, and hires an extra number of scientists, agitators and parsons to combat it- we must bow and thank the capitalist gentry. They are working for us. They are helping us to get the masses interested in the nature and significance of Bolshevism. And they cannot do otherwise; for they have already failed to stifle Bolshevism, to “ignore” it.”- V.I Lenin, Left Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
“…it was the very government and the way they treated us that started us on that road. For example, in my case, when they beat me in the DIC cells for being a “communist” and an “extremist” and all that, they awoke a great curiosity in me: “What is communism? What is socialism?” Every day they beat me over the head with that. And I began to ask myself: “What’s a socialist country? How are problems solved there? How do people live there? Are the miners massacred there?” And then I began to analyze: “What have I done? What do I want? What do I think? Why am I here? I only asked for justice for the people, I only asked for education to be better, I asked that there be no more massacres like the terrible San Juan massacre. Is that socialism? Is that communism?”“- Domitila Barrios de Chungara, Let Me Speak!: Testimony of Domitila, a Woman of the Bolivian Mines
