Soviet Quotes - Page 6

• People ask if I regret not winning a Stanley Cup, but winning the series against the Soviet Union was the best. It was the greatest experience of my hockey career by far.

  Marcel Dionne

  Regret, Hockey, Winning

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• Sometimes I do readings and people can’t stop laughing, but I’m reading about pretty tragic things. I think Soviet humor is a desperate humor, rather typical of very different nations, of Jewish people, Ukrainians, and of course, Russians. It’s despair - just keep laughing, until you are dead.

  Alina Bronsky

  Reading, Thinking, People

  "Hammer and Tickle". Interview with Stephen Heyman, tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com. April 16, 2011.

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• The Reagan Administration has no rational plan for our military. Instead, it acts on misinformed assumptions about the strength of the Soviet military and a presumed 'window of vulnerability,' which we now know not to exist.

  John F. Kerry

  Military, Administration, Assumption

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• It is clear that the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies.

  George F. Kennan

  Russia, Usa, America

  "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," Foreign Affairs, July 1947

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• One of the major principles is that Soviet literature must be inseverably linked with the policy of the Communist party

  Nikita Khrushchev

  Party, Principles, Literature

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• Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical; in the West, for being too conservative. He could please no one but the musical public. He revenged himself on both by writing a short piece called 'March of the Soviet Police.'

  Edward Abbey

  Writing, Police, Musical

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.41, RosettaBooks

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• In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.'

  William Safire

  Order, Judging, Style

  "Essay; Seizing Dictatorial Power" by William Safire, www.nytimes.com. November 15, 2001.

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• The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Unions, Emigration, Humanitarian

  "In Tapes, Nixon Rails About Jews and Blacks" by Adam Nagourney, www.nytimes.com. December 10, 2010.

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• According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Military, Army, Reality

  "How Jimmy Carter & I Started the Mujahideen". www.liveleak.com. January, 1998.

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• Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Breakup, Regret, War

  "The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan". Le Nouvel Observateur Interview, www.globalresearch.ca. January, 1998.

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• We have got to accept Big Government for the duration-for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores. … And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington-even with Truman at the reins of it all.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  War, Army, Government

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• During my first press conference as president, in answer to a direct question, I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution.

  Ronald Reagan

  Presidential, Leader, Answers

  Remarks at the Annual Convention of the the National Association of Evangelicals, delivered 8 March 1983, Orlando, Florida

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• Our rockets can find Halley's comet, and fly to Venus with amazing accuracy, but side by side with these scientific and technical triumphs is an obvious lack of efficiency in using scientific achievements for economic needs. Many Soviet household appliances are of poor quality.

  Mikhail Gorbachev

  War, Poor Quality, Achievement

  Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, Ernest W. Lefever (1989). “Perestroika: how new is Gorbachev's new thinking? : Mikhail Gorbachev's views and responses from Zbigniew Brezinski ... [and others]”, Ethics & Public Policy Center

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• World dictatorship can be established only when the victory of socialism has been achieved in certain countries or groups of countries ... [and] when these federation of republics have finally grown into a world union of Soviet Socialist Republics uniting the whole of mankind under the hegemony of the international proletariat organized as a state.

  Joseph Stalin

  Country, Historical, Victory

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• There also exists another alliance - at first glance a strange one, a surprising one - but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well grounded and easy to understand. This is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists. This alliance is not new. ... We observe continuous and steady support by the businessmen of the West of the Soviet Communist leaders.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Thinking, Communist Leaders, Support

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• In speaking of the capitalists who strive only for profit, only to get rich, I do not want to say that these are the most worthless people capable of doing nothing else. Many of them undoubtedly possess great organising talent, which I would not dream of denying. We Soviet people learn a lot from the capitalists. But if you mean people who are prepared to reconstruct the world, of course you will not be able to find them in the ranks of those who faithfully serve the cause of profit. ..The capitalist is riveted in profit and nothing can tear him away from it.

  Joseph Stalin

  Dream, Mean, People

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• If there's ever an example that military power alone cannot be successful in Afghanistan, I think it was the Soviet experience.

  Robert M. Gates

  Military, Successful, Thinking

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• Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory.

  Vladimir Putin

  Drama, Russia, Epidemics

  "Prince Charles is right: Similarites between Putin and Hitler are uncanny" Rep. Trent Franks, www.foxnews.com. May 23, 2014.

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• If kids can forget their own mothers but still have a sense of comrade Lenin, then Soviet power really is here to stay!

  Andrei Platonov

  Mother, Kids, Forget

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• The divine impeccability of the immortal [Soviet] State turned out not only to have suppressed individual human beings but also to have defended them, to have comforted them in their weakness, to have justified their insignificance. The State had taken on its own shoulders the entire weight of responsibility; it had liberated people from the chimera of conscience.

  Vasily Grossman

  Taken, Responsibility, People

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• The first gold medal we had won for the Soviet Union. This one we won for each other.

  Ekaterina Gordeeva

  Gold, Unions, Firsts

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• Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.

  Tom Clancy

  Hockey, Ice, Unions

  Tom Clancy (1989). “The Cardinal of the Kremlin”, p.175, Penguin

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• What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth...The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth.

  Paul Samuelson

  Powerful, Doubt, Growth

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• Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region, rioted over much needed spelling reform in the Soviet Union.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Funny, Humor, Reform

  "Year in Review". Rolling Stone, December 15, 1988.

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• What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?

  Ronald Reagan

  War, People, What If

  Ronald Reagan (2011). “An American Life: An Enhanced eBook with CBS Video: The Autobiography”, p.494, Simon and Schuster

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