If one cannot get along without a mirror, even in shaving oneself, how can one reconstruct oneself or one's life, without seeing oneself in the "mirror" of literature?
Only in the Fall of 1924 did [Joseph] Stalin discover that it is especially Russia, as distinguished from other countries, which can by its own forces build up a socialist society.
The Left Opposition declared that the new tempo of industrialization were above our forces, and that the liquidation of the kulaks as a class in the course of three years was a fantastic task, if one wishes to say so, we find ourselves this time "less radical" than the Stalinists.
Yet the proletariat has not only a vanguard, but also a rearguard, and besides the proletariat there are the peasantry and the bureaucracy.
In Russia itself the proletariat conquered in spite of the fact that there was no Soviet State in existence at the time elsewhere. For the victory are necessary, not only certain objective conditions, internal as well as external, but also certain subjective factors - the Party, the leadership, the strategy.
That the existence of the Soviet Union has an international revolutionary significance is a commonplace equally recognized by friends and foes.
The Soviet State does not need either illusions or camouflage. It can claim only that world authority which is confirmed by the facts.
I wrote a study about this question, The Lessons of October, which served as a pretext for my elimination from the government.
Simultaneously the Left Opposition in the course of several years carried on a struggle against the Stalinists in favor of collectivization.
