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Parvus denied that universal suffrage was an end in itself since the middle class would always had ways to manipulate the electoral system. Freedom could not be begged for: it had to be won. The bureaucracy and officer corps had to be eliminated. What was needed, in fact, was not just an uprising as demanded by the Bolsheviks but a commitment to a struggle to 'make the revolution permanent'.

— Robert Service Trotsky: A Biography (2009)

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More quotes by Robert Service

Freedom could not be begged for: it had to be won.

Trotsky: A Biography (2009)

The victor powers in the Great War had irresistible force at their disposal if only they could muster the will to deploy it. But they increasingly lacked that will.

Spies and Commissars: Bolshevik Russia and the West (2011)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Service (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.