Normal life cannot sustain revolutionary attitudes for long.
How banal, yet irrefutable, is the assertion that [a person] is a mixture of the 'angelic' and the 'demonic.' ... A true politician... can be neither... 'an angel' nor 'a demon... .' [Politicians] cannot be so if [they are] to... negotiate with courage and skill on the razor's edge between victory and defeat, life and death.
The terrible thing is that one cannot be a Communist and not let oneself in for the shameful act of recantation. One cannot be a Communist and preserve an iota of one's personal integrity.
The strongest are those who renounce their own times and become a living part of those yet to come. The strongest and the rarest.
Ideology in the Soviet Union is both dead, and very much alive! Dead at the level of faith; alive as an indispensable rationale of policy.
I had to follow that road, even if my steps were confused and indecisive. Otherwise I would not remain a man in my own eyes. For if I know something with certainty and I am convinced of its truth, how can I deny it, hide it from my closest friends; from the world and from myself?
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