Remember Trotsky? He was the smart one…
Revolution crushes and demolishes the machinery of the old state. Therein is its essence. Crowds fill the arena. They decide, they act, they legislate in their own unprecedented way; they judge, they issue orders. The essence of the revolution is that the mass itself becomes its own executive organ.
—Trotsky, Stalin and Bolshevism
The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct intervention of the masses in historic events … At those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barrier excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own inference the initial groundwork for a new regime … The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realms of rulership over their own destiny.
—Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution
