Soviet Quotes - Page 11

• It is sometimes said that one of the casualties of the general suspicion and mistrust that permeated the old Soviet Union was that the distinction between truth and other motivations to believe tended to break down. Upon hearing a purported piece of information, the reaction was not 'Is this true?' but 'Why is this person saying this? - What machinations or manipulations are going on here?' The question of truth did not, as it were, have the social space in which it could breath.

  Simon Blackburn

  Motivation, Believe, Space

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• All important architecture of the last century was strongly influenced by political systems. Look at the Soviet system, with its constructivism and Stalinism, Weimer with its Modern style, Mussolini and, of course, the Nazis and Albert Speer's colossal structures. Today's architecture is subservient to the market and its terms. The market has supplanted ideology. Architecture has turned into a spectacle. It has to package itself and no longer has significance as anything but a landmark.

  Rem Koolhaas

  Political, Style, Important

  ""Evil Can also Be Beautiful"". Interview with Matthias Matussek, Joachim Kronsbein, www.spiegel.de. March 27, 2006.

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• If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the U. S. A. , I would certainly choose the Soviet Union.

  Graham Greene

  Unions, Soviet Union, Ifs

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• Of course, Soviet people would like to see the face of surrounding states changed, but that is the business of the surrounding states.

  J. Stalin

  People, Faces, States

  Source: www.marxists.org

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• When I looked into the story of Soviet hockey and its players, I realized that it has nothing to do with hockey. It was a larger story using hockey as a window into the story of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian people, with friendships and betrayals, paranoia and oppression, and the meaning of sports to people and nations around the world, and how sports was used as a political tool.

  Gabe Polsky

  Sports, Betrayal, Fall

  Source: collider.com

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• It's important to remember that World War II was experienced very much as a continuity in that sense. Most of World War II in most of Europe wasn't a war; it was an occupation. The war was at the beginning and the end, except in Germany and the Soviet Union, and even there really only at the end. So the rest of time it's an occupation, which in some ways was experienced as an extension of the interwar period. World War II was simply an extreme form, in a whole new key, of the disruption of normal life that began in 1914.

  Tony Judt

  War, Important, World

  "Postwar". Interview With Julian Brookes, www.motherjones.com. December 20, 2005.

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• I've always criticised American policy when I've disagreed with it. Just as I've criticised British policy. I was violently anti-Suez and pro-American in 1956, just as I was violently anti-Soviet on the invasion of Hungary which took place at the same time.

  Denis Healey

  Invasion, Hungary, British

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• I have a consistent rule: The American people should know as much about the Pentagon as the Soviet Union and China do, as much about General Motors as Ford does, and as much about City Bank as Chase Manhattan does.

  Ralph Nader

  Cities, People, Doe

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• We lived in a totalitarian system for more than 70 years, and our views are still under its influence. Many heads of state in the former Soviet republics believe that they must have total power.

  Irakli Okruashvili

  Believe, Views, Years

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• When the whole discussion of "developing a national idea" hastily began in post-Soviet Russia, I tried to pour cold water on it with the objection that, after all the devastating losses we had experienced, it would be quite sufficient to have just one task: the preservation of a dying people.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Loss, Ideas, Russia

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Vladimir Putin knows exactly what he wants from the relationship with USA. In return for good relations, he wants lifting of sanctions, ratification, approval of his wars in Ukraine and Syria, and his dream of dreams, an acknowledgment of his sphere of influence in Ukraine and the former Soviet Union.

  Michael McFaul

  Dream, War, Influence

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• It is painful to talk about it, but even with its 110,000 elite soldiers, the Soviet Union never managed to gain control over the entire Afghan territory.

  Sergei Ivanov

  Soldier, Unions, Territory

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• When the Soviet Union was dissolved, most of us didn't even have the feeling that the country was falling apart. We thought we would continue with our lives as in the past, but as good neighbors.

  Vladislav Surkov

  Country, Fall, Past

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• Putin is not a mass murderer. But, having said that, he is a product of the KGB, and the KGB was, of course, the secret police force of the Soviet Union.

  Anne Applebaum

  Police, Secret, Murderer

  Source: www.politico.com

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• Soviet-era nostalgia has strong support among the people. But not among the elite and, in my opinion, not with the president. We are not interested in keeping remnants of the communist era alive.

  Vladislav Surkov

  Strong, People, Support

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• During the Cold War era, the issue was the containment of Soviet influence, and we tolerated many an authoritarian regime as long as they were useful to us in this respect.

  Zalmay Khalilzad

  War, Issues, Long

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• You want to favor systems that benefit from error, disorder, variability and things like that. You want to favor these systems and unfortunately, when - there's something I call the Soviet Illusion. The more the government becomes intrusive, the more things have to follow a script, and it can't handle this kind of system.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Errors, Government, Benefits

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• The breakup of the Soviet Union is a national tragedy on an enormous scale only the elites and nationalists of the republics gained.

  Vladimir Putin

  Breakup, Tragedy, Unions

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• Mr. Gorbachev initiated Glasnost, Perestroika, so he was already, you know, way disenchanted with the rigid Communist ideology, and he was looking to become an international leader. He was more accepted actually outside of the Communist Soviet Union than inside.

  Deepak Chopra

  Leader, Unions, Way

  "The Tavis Smiley Show", www.pbs.org. May 27, 2015.

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• We had in the West a very romantic vision of Russia back in 1991, when the Soviet Union died and whatever is Russia began to emerge. And we began to think of it as a democracy. We're going to bring it into the West. All is going to be wonderful. That was never in the cards.

  Marvin Kalb

  Thinking, Russia, Vision

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• It is one of the many ironies of this period that, at a time when the intelligentsia were excoriating Mellon for tax-evasion, and contrasting the smooth-running Soviet planned economy with the breakdown in America, he was secretly exploiting the frantic necessities of the Soviet leaders to form the basis of one of America's most splendid public collections

  Paul Johnson

  Running, America, Leader

  Paul Johnson (1991). “Modern times: the world from the twenties to the nineties”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• John Kerry and the other Democratic leaders are on the wrong side of history, as they were during the Reagan presidency. If they had won the day, and Reagan had failed, the Soviet Union would still exist, as would all the harm and suffering it unleashed, and American security would be far weaker as a result. And if they win this election thanks to a promise to undo the Reagan-Bush Doctrine, those cheering loudest will be the most evil-loving among us.

  Mark Levin

  Cheer, Winning, Evil

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• I decided to create a sports club during the Soviet times. It was my dream.

  Sergei Bubka

  Sports, Dream, Clubs

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• The fight against Jewish world Bolshevization requires a clear attitude toward Soviet Russia. You cannot drive out the Devil with Beelzebub.

  Adolf Hitler

  Attitude, Fighting, Russia

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• [In Moscow] we got through to [Soviet leaders] Brezhnev and Kosygin on the telephone. I think it was because nobody had ever tried to call them at home before.

  Ross Perot

  Funny, Humorous, Home

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