Peasants Quotes

“The peasant rebellion against collectivization was the most serious episode in popular resistance experienced by the Soviet state after the Russian Civil War. In 1930, more than two million peasants took part in 13,754 mass disturbances. In 1929 and 1930, the OGPU recorded 22,887 "terrorists acts" aimed at local officials and peasant activists, more than 1,100 murders.”

“In insisting that peasant activity contrary to Communist policies could be defined as kulak while at the same time maintaining that his approach to the peasantry was based on scientific Marxist class analysis, Lenin provided his successors with conceptualizations that would be used in collectivization when Stalin launched a war against all peasants.”

“There is no sadder symbol of the crippling poverty in which millions of peasants were forced to live than the image of a peasant and his son struggling to drag a plough through the mud.”

“The peasant is the only species of human being who doesn't like the country and never looks at it.”

“Give the peasants neither life nor death.”

“'Tis Fate that flings the dice And as she flings Of kings makes peasants And of peasants kings.”

“Tis Fate that flings the dice,And as she flingsOf kings makes peasants,And of peasants kings.”

“The greatest sorrow in the life of a peasant is that his donkey is lost. And the greatest happiness is that he finds it back.”

“I heard so many stories from Gaomi's peasants that I had an irrepressible urge to write them down. Today, Gaomi's peasants know that they have become famous around the world through my writings, but I think they are a little puzzled by this.”

“Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is-- so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.”