Soviet Quotes
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I see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a great tragedy of the XX century.
Vladimir Putin -
You cannot do anything without rousing the masses to action. A plenary meeting of the Soviet must be called to decide on mass searches in Petrograd and the goods stations. To carry out these searches, each factory and company must form contingents, not on a voluntary basis: it must be the duty of everyone to take part in these searches under the threat of being deprived of his bread card. We can't expect to get anywhere unless we resort to terrorism: speculators must be shot on the spot. Moreover, bandits must be dealt with just as resolutely: they must be shot on the spot.
Vladimir Lenin
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The basis of bureaucratic rule is the poverty of society in objects of consumption, with the resulting struggle of each against all. When there is enough goods in a store, the purchasers can come whenever they want to. When there is little goods, the purchasers are compelled to stand in line. When the lines are very long, it is necessary to appoint a policeman to keep order. Such is the starting point of the power of the Soviet bureaucracy. It "knows" who is to get something and who has to wait.
Leon Trotsky -
Unlike the American President's chronic problem of finding ways to give away the country's permanent economic surplus, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's was the problem of rationing permanent scarcity.
Elie Abel -
Even the Soviet Union, with its huge nuclear arsenal, was a threat that could be deterred by the prospect of retaliation. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. They can only be annihilated - preemptively and unilaterally, if necessary.
Thomas Sowell -
Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust.
Aldrich Ames -
Over the course of the year 1990, the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher had many conversations with President [Mikhail] Gorbachev and other Soviet officials.
Vladimir Putin -
I decided to create a sports club during the Soviet times. It was my dream.
Sergei Bubka
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In the end, one or the other will triumph - a funeral dirge will be sung over the Soviet republic or over world capitalism.
Vladimir Lenin -
I said in court a long time ago that I didn't see that the Soviet Union was significantly helped by the information I gave them, nor that the United States was significantly harmed.
Aldrich Ames -
I am a Soviet man, and Yeltsin is a Soviet man - maybe our grandchildren will be different.
Alexander Lebed -
The Soviet transition to a new political structure shows that the Soviet strategists are thinking, planning and acting in broad terms, way beyond the imagination of Western politicians. For this reason Western politicians cannot grasp the fact that the Soviet intention is to win by 'democratic' means. Through transition to a new system, the Soviets are revitalising their own people and institutions, and they are succeeding. Contrary to Western belief, they are holding their ranks together.
Anatoliy Golitsyn -
'They were right. The Soviet régime is not the embodiment of evil as you think in the West. They have laws and I broke them. I hate tea and they love tea. Who is wrong?
Alexander Zinoviev -
In the 1980s America reacted to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. We supported a war that left a nation torn to pieces. And as the last Soviet tank left the country, so did we.
Simon Sinek
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Only under conditions of revolutionary crises do you have the highest level of self-organization; this is the Soviet type of organization, which is to say, workers' councils, people's councils, call them what you want, popular committees.
Ernest Mandel -
The constitution of Soviet Russia must insure equal rights for all citizens regardless of sex, creed, race, or nationality.
Vladimir Lenin -
Take, for example, Lithuania. Do you know, what was its population in the Soviet times? It was 3.4 mln people. It was a small country, a small republic. And what is it now? I have looked though the recent statistics, today the population of this country is 1.4 mln people. Where are the people? More than half of the citizens have left the country.
Vladimir Putin -
My goal was to show the history of the end of the Cold War through both sides - the U.S. side and the Soviet side. I really felt that especially the Soviet side of the story hadn't been well told because we didn't know.
David E. Hoffman -
Soviet regime in a way deprived me from my childhood in my homeland, because my father was in military, and after the Yalta agreement he was sent to teach in military academy in Riga, and I was born then.
Mikhail Baryshnikov -
Soviet propaganda is remarkably effective and the Americans are even more remarkably stupid.
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
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This document will play an important role in protecting the strategic interests of Russia and Uzbekistan and ensuring stability and security in the region, which some politicians call Russia's soft underbelly. It's not a secret that after the Soviet collapse and especially in recent years, Central Asia has become the focus of interest of major nations because of its geographic location and rich mineral resources.
Islom Karimov -
As a result of half a century of Soviet rule people have been weaned from a belief in human kindness.
Svetlana Alliluyeva -
During the 1930s, some of the leading intellectuals in America condemned our economic system and pointed to the centrally planned Soviet economy as a model -- all this at a time when literally millions of people were starving to death in the Soviet Union, from a famine in a country with some of the richest farmland in Europe and historically a large exporter of food.
Thomas Sowell -
Modern capitalist nations are the fruit of a history of slavery, genocide, violence and exploitation every bit as abhorrent as Mao's China or Stalin's Soviet Union.
Terry Eagleton