Club Jacobin

"True, we executed a number of people during the above-mentioned campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries. But what sort of people were they? They were counter-revolutionaries who owed the masses many blood debts and were bitterly hated. In a great revolution embracing 600 million people, the masses would not have been able to rise if we had not killed off such local despots as the “Tyrant of the East” and the “Tyrant of the West”. Had it not been for that campaign of suppression, the people would not have approved our present policy of leniency. Now that some people have heard that Stalin wrongly put a number of people to death, they jump to the conclusion that we too were wrong in putting those counter-revolutionaries to death. This is a wrong view. It is of immediate significance today to affirm that it was absolutely right to execute those counter-revolutionaries."