S.M. Schwartz

“Only one group, the intelligentsia, rose to challenge the dynasty. Educated people in all walks of life, especially those who had not been absorbed in officialdom, had no less reason than had the peasantry to be disappointed with the Tsar—the Emancipator. He had first aroused and then frustrated their craving for freedom as he had aroused and deceived the muzhiks’ hunger for land. Alexander had not, like his predecessor Nicholas I, chastised the intelligentsia with scorpions; but he was still punishing them with whips. His reforms in education and in the Press had been half-hearted and mean: the spiritual life of the nation remained under the tutelage of the police, the censorship, and the Holy Synod. By offering the educated a semblance of freedom he made the denial of real freedom even more painful and humiliating. The intelligentsia sought to avenge their betrayed hopes; the Tsar strove to tame their restive spirit; and, so, semi-liberal reforms gave way to repression and repression bred rebellion. Numerically”
― Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky

“In addition to the alienation of farmers, large parts of the Mittelstand, growing numbers of industrialists and of the nationalist right by 1928, there was a further worrying trend facing the regime, the progressive disillusionment of young people and of the literary and cultural elites. The First World War and its aftermath had shaken loose many of the traditional ties binding young people to their families and to their local communities. As the Koblenz authorities noted in the early 1920s, ‘the present sad appearance of the young, their debasement on the steeets, in pubs and dance halls results from the absence of firm authority by fathers and by schools during the war. The children of that time are today s young people who have little sense of authority and discipline.’ In Cologne, it was observed that young people were spending too much time on ‘visits to pubs, excessive drinking and dancing’. As”
― Ruth Henig, The Weimar Republic 1919-1933

“But on 1 March 1881 the conspirators succeeded in assassinating the Tsar. To”
― Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky

“The Central Committee will cut off its relations with [the undisciplined organization] and it will thereby cut off that organization from the entire world of revolution. The Central Committee will stop the flow of literature and of wherewithal to that organization. It will send into the field … its own detachment, and, having endowed it with the necessary resources, the Central Committee will proclaim that this detachment is the local committee.”
― Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky