Soviet Union Quotes - Page 9

• 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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• I certainly wouldn't say that we loved the arms race. Trillions of dollars were used to stoke it. For our economy, which was smaller in size than the American economy, it was a burden. But one cannot agree with the statement that the arms race played the key role in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  Keys, Race, Dollars

  Interview with Amitabh Pal, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. November 12, 2003.

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• Nowadays, there are plans to separate the Baltic states from the common power system of the former Soviet Union and to integrate them into the European system. What does it mean for us in practice? In practice, it means that a number of zones will emerge between several regions of the Russian Federation, where we will have no power transmission lines, since previously we used to have a loop transition through the Baltic countries.

  Vladimir Putin

  Country, Mean, Practice

  Source: www.russianembassy.org

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• When you think of power, you think the state has power. When you look at it in terms of revolution, in terms of the state, you think of it in terms of Russia, the Soviet Union, and how those who struggled for power actually became victims of the state, prisoners of the state, and how that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We have to think of revolution much more in terms of transitions from one epoch to another. Talk about Paleolithic and Neolithic.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Thinking, Russia, Transition

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Japan's diplomatic efforts could have had a broader international perspective. Relations with the U.S. are, of course, the cornerstone of Japan's diplomacy, but the U.S. acts on its global strategy. For instance, Washington suddenly got closer to China in the early 1970s as part of its strategy against the Soviet Union.

  Sadako Ogata

  Japan, Perspective, Effort

  "Japan should be a peace broker, former UN refugee chief says". Interview with Hiroyuki Akita, asia.nikkei.com. August 19, 2015.

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• It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States.

  John F. Kennedy

  Nuclear Missiles, United States, Cuba

  Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation, delivered 22 October 1962

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• The Russian revolution did not occur until a generation after Marx's death. He was not involved with it, or with what came after it. His works do not describe post-capitalist society, and a fortiori they do not recommend any part of what the Soviet Union did.

  Allen W. Wood

  Unions, Revolution, Generations

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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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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• Soviet Union foreign policy is a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma, and the key is Russian nationalism.

  Winston Churchill

  Keys, Unions, Riddle

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• There (in the Soviet Union) it was a science. In order to be a coach, you had to study in school.

  Gabe Polsky

  School, Order, Unions

  Source: collider.com

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• What I found interesting about Slava Fetisov was that he went through three different generations of Soviet hockey. In the late 70's, he experienced the Miracle on Ice, and then in the 80's became with his teammates the Russian Five, the most dominant team in the history of hockey, and then helped bring down the hockey system when the Soviet Union collapsed and became one of the first players to play in the NHL, and then ultimately came back to Russia.

  Gabe Polsky

  Team, Hockey, Player

  Source: collider.com

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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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• Growing up, I didn't know very much about my heritage and the Soviet Union and things of that nature. But when I saw the Soviet Union play hockey for the first time, to me, it was profound.

  Gabe Polsky

  Growing Up, Hockey, Play

  Source: collider.com

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• One ironic thing is that although (the Soviet Union) was one of the most oppressive systems, with no respect for the individual, it somehow produced the freest hockey on the planet. These guys, when they got on the ice, it was like watching jazz. They could do anything. I find that a paradox. It's interesting because I think the North American style was a lot less free. It was not encouraged to be creative.

  Gabe Polsky

  Hockey, Thinking, Ice

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• The Soviet Union is going to have a human-rights explosion. You'll have hundreds of thousands of dissidents.

  Andrew Young

  Rights, Unions, Explosions

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• If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union.

  Vladimir Bukovsky

  Monsters, Unions, Structure

  "Secretly Trading Away Our Independence" by William F. Jasper, www.thenewamerican.com. May 9, 2013.

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• My parents are from the former Soviet Union, from Ukraine, and I grew up wanting to be a professional hockey player.

  Gabe Polsky

  Hockey, Player, Ukraine

  Source: collider.com

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• There is also this great sense of triumphalism, that just as we defeated the Soviet Union, we can do this. And out of this sense of desperation and pathological religion, there develops an all-encompassing drive to harm and hurt, without regard for the innocent and the uninvolved, which was the case in New York.

  Edward Said

  Hurt, New York, Unions

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• There is no way to avoid the reality that the American government in the past years has been the most spectacularly hypocrisy-driven government in the world. We rival the Soviet Union in some stages, in some ways, in hypocrisy.

  Michael Scheuer

  Past, Reality, Government

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• In the West, since the collapse of communism and the fall of the Soviet Union, the one discipline both the official and unofficial cultures have united in casting aside has been history.

  Tariq Ali

  Fall, Discipline, Culture

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. January 31, 2002.

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• Of course, socialism is just evil now. It's completely discredited supposedly by the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can't help noticing that my grandchildren are heavily in hock to Communist China now which is evidently a whole lot better at business than we are.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Grandchildren, Evil, Unions

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• Ronald Reagan reignited the American economy, rebuilt the Military, bankrupted the Soviet Union and defeated Soviet Communism. I will do the same thing.

  Ted Cruz

  Military, Unions, Communism

  The fifth Republican debate, www.washingtonpost.com. December 15, 2015.

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• 25 million of Russian people suddenly turned out to be outside the borders of the Russian Federation. They used to live in one state; the Soviet Union has traditionally been called Russia, the Soviet Russia, and it was the great Russia. Then the Soviet Union suddenly fell apart, in fact, overnight, and it turned out that in the former Soviet Union republics there were 25 million Russians. They used to live in one country and suddenly found themselves abroad. Can you imagine how many problems came out?

  Vladimir Putin

  Country, Russia, People

  "Interview to American TV channel CBS and PBS". Interview with Charlie Rose, en.kremlin.ru. September 29, 2015.

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• Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all - in one way or another - obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.

  Doris Lessing

  Country, People, Unions

  "A Notorious Life". Interview with Dwight Garner, www.salon.com. November 11, 1997.

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• Vladimir Putin is a smart guy. I don't like him, smart guy. He is going to advance the cause of Russia until he hits a brick wall. He's hit a brick wall in a few areas. I think we need to make it clear that your growth of the former Soviet Union is over. You can be a great power that's respected. Fine. But this is not going to be the old Soviet Union.

  Adam Kinzinger

  Wall, Smart, Thinking

  Source: abcnews.go.com

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