Communist Party of the Soviet Union members

"Some people in the West now express anxiety over the fact that the Soviet Union has still further outstripped the United States of America in the “space race.” Some people say that the United States is two years behind, others mention five years. Of course, it is pleasure for us that our country is ahead in the exploration of outer space. But we Soviet people do not regard our space research as an end in itself, as some kind of “race.” In the great and serious cause of the exploration and development of outer space, the spirit of frantic gamblers is alien to us. We see in this cause part and parcel of the tremendous constructive work the Soviet people are doing in conformity with the general line of our party in all spheres of the economy, science and culture, in the name of man, for the sake of man."

"The general line of our party worked out by its 20th, 21st and 22d congresses is a Leninist line. It was, is and will be the only immutable line in the entire domestic and foreign policy of the Communist party and the Soviet state. The party sees its supreme duty in serving the people, in strengthening the might of our Socialist country, adding to its glory and prestige, consistently and unswervingly implementing the great ideas of Marxism-Leninism."

"Comrades, our country is a vast Communist construction project. The scope of our work is great. But the tasks facing us in all spheres of life are even more majestic. The development of our economy, science and culture, the strengthening of the defenses of our Socialist power, serves the cause of peace and security of all peoples. Our successes make all mankind confident that the forces of peace and reason are gaining in strength, that the Soviet people are blazing the true way to the triumph of universal peace and progress."

"Communists have always viewed the national question through the prism of the class struggle, believing that its solution has to be subordinated to the interests of the Revolution, to the interests of socialism. That is why Communists and all fighters for socialism believe that the main aspect of the national question is unification of the working people, regardless of their national origin, in the common struggle against every type of oppression, and for a new social system which rules out exploitation of the working people."

"Our Party supports and will continue to support peoples fighting for their freedom. In so doing, the Soviet Union does not look for advantages, does not hunt for concessions, does not seek political domination and is not after military bases. We act as we are bid by our revolutionary conscience, our communist convictions."

"The substance of socialist democracy lies in efficient socialist organisation of all society for the sake of every individual, and in the socialist discipline of every individual for the sake of all society."

"In the present epoch, when the international class struggle has grown extremely acute, the danger of Right and ‘Left’ deviations and of nationalism in the communist movement has grown more tangible than ever before. The struggle against Right- and ‘Left’-wing opportunism and nationalism cannot therefore be conducted as a campaign calculated for only some definite span of time. The denunciation of opportunism of all kinds was and remains an immutable law for all Marxist-Leninist Parties."

"The defeat of Nazi Germany signified the victory of progress over reaction, humanity over barbarism and the victory of socialism over imperialist obscurantism. This victory opened the road for advancing the revolutionary struggle of the working class, a national liberation movement on an unprecedented scale and the destruction of the shameful colonial system."

"One of our primary tasks is to foster in people a desire to attain lofty social goals, to foster in them ideological conviction and a truly creative attitude to work. This is a very important area of struggle for communism, and the economic as well as the socio-political development of the country will be increasingly dependent on our successes in this area."

"Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, revisionists and opportunists reflect the pressure of nonproletarian, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois strata, the pressure that results from the force of habit, from the views and vestiges of the past, particularly those that are nationalistic."

"We want the world socialist system to be a well-knit family of nations, building and defending the new society together, and mutually enriching each other with experience and knowledge, a family, strong and united, which the people of the world would regard as the prototype of the future world community of free nations."

"Successes in socialist construction largely depend on the correct combination of the general and the nationally specific in social development. Not only are we now theoretically aware but also have been convinced in practice that the way to socialism and its main features are determined by the general regularities, which are inherent in the development of all the socialist countries. We are also aware that the effect of the general regularities is manifested in different forms consistent with concrete historical conditions and national specifics. It is impossible to build socialism without basing oneself on general regularities or taking account of the concrete historical specifics of each country. Nor is it possible without a consideration of both these factors correctly to develop relations between the socialist states."

"It stands to the Party’s credit that millions upon millions of Soviet men of every nation and nationality have adopted internationalism—once the ideal of a handful of Communists—as their deep conviction and standard of behaviour. This was a true revolution in social thinking, and one which it is hard to overestimate."

"December 30, 1922, is a truly historic date in the life of our state, an important milestone in the life of all the Soviet peoples, their great festival."

"Modern production sets rapidly rising demands not only on machines, on technology, but also and primarily on the workers, on those who create these machines and control this technology. For ever larger segments of workers specialised knowledge and a high degree of professional training, man’s general cultural standard, are becoming an obligatory condition of successful work."

"Today progress is so swift in all fields that the education received by young people is only a foundation that requires the constant acquisition of knowledge."

"Our militant union with peoples which still have to carry on an armed struggle against the colonialists constitutes an important element of our line in international affairs."

"Every man must be made to realize that further retreat is impossible. He must realize with his mind and heart that this is a matter of life and death of the Soviet state, of the life and death of the people of our country...the Nazi troops must be stopped now, before it is too late."

"The most important thing in my life, its leitmotif, has been the constant and close contacts with working people, with workers and peasants."

"When external and internal forces hostile to the development of socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of the restoration of the capitalist system, when a threat arises to the cause of socialism in that country … this is no longer merely a problem for that country's people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries."

"We stand for the dismantling of foreign military bases. We stand for a reduction of armed forces and armaments in areas where military confrontation is especially dangerous, above all in central Europe."

"We regard the improvement of Soviet-American relations not as an isolated phenomenon, but as an integral — and very important — part of the wider process of radically improving the international atmosphere. Mankind has outgrown the rigid "cold war" armor which it was once forced to wear. It wants to breathe freely and peacefully. And we will be happy if our efforts to better Soviet-American relations help draw more and more nations into the process of détente — be it in Europe or Asia, in Africa or Latin America, in the Middle or the Far East."

"The Soviet people are perhaps second to none when it comes to knowing what war means. In World War II we won a victory of world historic significance. But in that war over 20 million Soviet citizens died, 70,000 of our towns and villages were devastated, and one third of our national wealth was destroyed. The war wounds have now been healed. Today the Soviet Union is a mightier and more prosperous country than ever before. But we remember the lessons of the war only too well, and that is why the peoples of the Soviet Union value peace so highly; that is why they strongly approve the peace policy of our Party and Government."

"Our path has not been an easy one. Our people are proud that in a historically short period of time, after the victory of the Socialist Revolution, backward Russia transformed itself into a major industrial power and achieved outstanding successes in science and culture. We take pride in having built a new society — a most stable and confidently developing society — which has assured all our citizens of social justice and has made the values of modern civilization the property of all the people. We are proud that dozens of previously oppressed nations and nationalities in our country have become genuinely equal, and that in our close-knit family of nations they are developing their economy and culture. We have great plans for the future. We want to raise considerably the living standards of the Soviet people. We want to make new advances in education and medicine. We want to make our villages and towns more comfortable to live in and more beautiful. We have drafted programs to develop the remote areas of Siberia, the North and the Far East, with their immense natural resources. And every Soviet individual is deeply conscious of the fact that the realization of those plans requires peace and peaceful cooperation with other nations."

"We Communists have got to string along with the capitalists for a while. We need their agriculture and their technology. But we are going to continue massive military programs. . . (soon) we will be in a position to return to a much more aggressive foreign policy designed to gain the upper-hand. . ."

"As you know, I am not a writer but a Party functionary. But like every Communist I consider myself to have been mobilized by Party propaganda and deem it my duty to participate actively in the work of our press."

"Soviet people are better off materially and richer spiritually."

"We bow our heads in respect for those Soviet women who displayed exceptional courage in the severe time of war. Never before but during the days of the war the grandeur of spirit and the invincible will of our Soviet women, their selfless dedication, loyalty and affection to their Homeland, their boundless persistence in work and their heroism on the front manifested themselves with such strength."

"Modern science and technology have reached a level where there is the grave danger that a weapon even more terrible than nuclear weapons may be developed. The reason and conscience of mankind dictate the need to erect an insuperable barrier barrier to the development of such a weapon."

"Of late, attempts have been made in the USA — at a high level and in a rather cynical form — to play the "Chinese card" against the USSR. This is a shortsighted and dangerous policy."

"The rout of fascism, in which the Soviet Union played the decisive role, generated a mighty tide of socio-political changes which swept across the globe."

"Regarding the dreams of reaching military superiority over the U.S.S.R., one would do better to drop them. If it has to be, the Soviet people would find the possibility to undertake any additional efforts and to do everything that is necessary to guarantee a reliable defense of their country."

"We are entirely for the idea that Europe shall be free from nuclear weapons, from medium-range weapons as well as tactical weapons. That would be a real zero option."

"It is madness for any country to build its policy with an eye to nuclear war."

"I shall add that only he who has decided to commit suicide can start a nuclear war in the hope of emerging a victor from it. No matter what the attacker might possess, no matter what method of unleashing nuclear war he chooses, he will not attain his aims. Retribution will inevitably ensue."

"Detente is a readiness to resolve differences and conflicts not by force, not by threats and sabre-rattling, but by peaceful means, at the conference table."

"God will not forgive us if we fail."

"The trouble with free elections is, you never know who is going to win."

"Our aim is to gain control of the two great treasure houses on which the West depends: The energy treasure house of the Persian Gulf and the minerals treasure house of Central and Southern Africa."

"Khrushchev had rashly promised that the country would achieve full communism by 1980. The more cautious Brezhnev shelved this in favour of ‘developed socialism’, an anodyne formulation that stood, in effect, for the economic and political system that already existed in the Soviet Union. But that was fine by the majority of Soviet citizens. They wanted more consumer goods for themselves, not communally shared goods, as would be delivered under the Communist model. It was a post-revolutionary moment, with the Revolution firmly consigned to history."

"We say there is a world of difference, a chasm, between carrying on the foreign policy and plunging the Nation into war. If Mr. Brezhnev has the authority do that, we disapprove of it. We disapprove of the system under which Mr. Brezhnev operates. Indeed, if that system can have anything said about it, that is exactly what is threatening the world and what is threatening the detente. We reject that. The House has rejected it and we should reject it."

"Brezhnev is a realist. He does not want war. He wants the world, but he doesn’t want war."

"All ideological differences set apart, I cannot help having a sincere admiration for Mr Brezhnev. He is to all appearances an outstanding diplomat. He abides by the policy of peaceful co-existence as laid down by the Helsinki agreement. And he has succeeded in making his country as powerful as it is today: the first nuclear power in the world, soon to be he first maritime power; as for the land and air forces, their superiority is so great that it bears no comparison."

"When the Soviet Union came to be run by a valetudinarian mafioso like Brezhnev, the thing itself had fallen into self-contempt."

"In 1964, his colleagues deposed Khrushchev: the establishment had grown weary of his restless activity and yearned, in the words of his son, “for calm and stability.” His place was taken by Leonid Brezhnev, who would serve as first secretary for eighteen years, even though late in life he showed distinct signs of senility: the machine simply ground on. Year by year, the Soviet regime decayed. The economy stagnated, falling ever more behind those of the advanced industrial countries. With fear of draconian punishment gone, workers had little incentive to exert themselves: as they cynically explained, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” Workers who showed zeal risked being accused by their colleagues of “provocation” and roughed up. The central planning apparatus concentrated on doing what it knew best: turning out the same goods and in the process missing out on such innovations as plastics, synthetic fibers, and, above all, computers. Insistence on tight control of information meant that the USSR did not participate in advances in information technology, which revolutionized Western economies. The living standards of ordinary citizens, though better than in Stalin’s day, fell below even the low minimal norms set by the state: thus in the late 1980s, nearly one-half of the Soviet population earned less than ten dollars a month. Drunkenness was endemic: the Soviet Union could boast the highest rate of alcohol consumption in the world, as well as the highest rate of alcoholic deaths. Nothing illustrated better the ebbing vitality of its citizens than demographic statistics: the population, which under tsarism had grown at the most rapid rate in Europe, by the 1970s showed a deficit, as more Russians (and Ukrainians) died each year than were born."

"The humiliation Krushchev suffered at the hands of Kennedy during the [[Cuban Missile Crisis|[Cuban] missile crisis]] contributed to his removal from power in October 1964. The new Soviet leadership, headed by Leonid Brezhnev, was determined to avoid a repetition of the humiliation Krushchev had experienced. Beginning in early 1965, the Kremlin embarked on a massive expansion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal that would enable the Soviet Union to achieve nuclear parity with the United States by the end of the decade."

"You know, Michael, what I really wanted was to get the presidential nomination and then win the presidency in November because I was looking forward to negotiating the SALT treaty with Brezhnev. It has been a long time since an American president has stood up to the Soviet Union. It seems that every time we get into negotiations, the Soviets are telling us what we are going to have to give up in order for us to get along with them, and we forget who we are. I wanted to become president of the United States, so I could sit down with Brezhnev. And I was going to let him pick out the size of the table, and I was going to listen to him tell me, the American president, what we were going to have to give up. And I was going to listen to him for maybe twenty minutes, and then I was going to get up from my side of the table, walk around to the other side, and lean over and whisper in his ear "Nyet.' It has been a long time since they've heard 'nyet' from an American president."

"The ultimate beneficiary of Nixon’s summitry was Leonid Brezhnev. The Soviet party leader had staked his bid for outright leadership on a policy of peaceful coexistence with the United States. That made sense for economic and defense reasons, not to mention the looming threat from China. In the spring of 1972 Brezhnev let nothing, not even the American mining of North Vietnam, get in the way of a summit. The arms control agreements signed in Moscow in May silenced his critics and apparently confirmed the Soviet Union’s equality with the United States. The statement of Basic Principles also suggested that the Americans were accepting détente on Soviet terms. Had Nixon remained potent in the second term he might have held the Kremlin to account, as he believed had not been done after Yalta. Instead his crumbling presidency gave the Soviets and their allies an increasingly free hand to act as they pleased. By the middle of 1975 communist forces controlled all of Indochina. Over the next few years the Soviets extended their influence in eastern and southern Africa, in ways that fitted their understanding of détente— a world made safe for class struggle—but also undermined support for the process in the United States. In 1976 Gerald Ford, Nixon’s successor, banned the word “détente” from the official diplomatic lexicon. Nixon’s failure, in other words, relegated not merely summitry but diplomacy to the back burner. Dialogue with Moscow atrophied. And after the Brezhnev Politburo sent troops into Afghanistan at the end of 1979, Soviet-American relations degenerated into what was dubbed a “new cold war.”"

"When he [Brezhnev] succeeded Khrushchev, he was still a vigorous politician who expected to make the Party and government work more effectively...But his General Secretaryship had turned into a ceremonial reign that had brought communism into its deepest contempt since 1917."

"Both Khrushchëv and his successor Brezhnev asserted that communism around the world outdid the West’s advanced capitalist countries in freedom and welfare. They ignored the point that elections were pointless when a single candidate from one party alone was allowed to stand in them; they glossed over the detention of political, intellectual and religious dissenters in the Gulag. But Soviet leaders were frequently thought to score better on other matters. There was no unemployment in the USSR. Citizens were guaranteed shelter, heating, fuel, schooling, public transport and healthcare at little or no cost. Tourists to the Soviet Union reported that muggings were rare and graffiti scrawls practically unknown; and neon-light advertisements were nowhere to be seen. What is more, Soviet spokesmen castigated racism, imperialism and nationalism. The USSR was a multinational state. Its spokesmen insisted that it had eliminated the iniquities of imperialism, nationalism and racism. Although the European empires dissolved themselves in the 1950s and 1960s, the former colonies continued to face difficulties of economic dependency and under-development. Soviet Azerbaijan was compared favourably with ex-British Nigeria, ex-French Algeria and ex-Dutch Malaysia."

"Brezhnev wasn’t a minus for the history of our country, he was a huge plus, He laid a foundation for the country’s economics and agriculture."

"One of the world's most important figures for nearly two decades."

"He stood by us in our moment of need."

"In capitalist countries the bourgeoisie leads. So long as imperialism and socialism are locked in struggle with each other, it's either a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or a dictatorship of the working class."

"We also had a defeat in 1905 but we triumphed in 1917. We wouldn't have won in 1917 if it hadn't been for 1905. This should be taken into consideration. This should be understood. Some say, give us victory now! If not, it's no good. Tea drinkers. They want everything handed to them in a tea saucer."

"Life has improved, and now as never before the doors to a happy and cultured life for all the peoples of our Union stand wide open. We are already enjoying the first fruits of our victory and we see that an unparalleled rise in the standard of living and culture of all the peoples of the Soviet Union awaits us. And in spite of all this, we have not yet seen the last of people who in their blind hatred of the new world are planning the seizure and dismemberment of the Soviet Union. Well, what shall we say to them? It is true that we appeared in the world without the permission of these gentlemen, and undoubtedly against their wishes.... This means that the time has come when the old world must make way for the new."

"[W]e've done so much that even if we are smashed, everything will have been worth it. If not today, then tomorrow."

"Infallible people do not exist, Lenin used to say. It depends, first, on the kind of error and, second, how long it persisted. And whether there was willingness to pursue the line considered correct. If there was such willingness, certain errors had to be passed over.""

"I do not believe that everything we did under Stalin was right. But the main thing we achieved gives us justifiable pride. Had we been conquered, we would have had to wait a long time for liberation."

"Stalin will be rehabilitated, needless to say."

"Events arising out of the Polish-German War have revealed the internal insolvency and obvious impotence of the Polish state. Polish ruling circles have suffered bankruptcy.... Warsaw as the capital of the Polish state no longer exists. No one knows the whereabouts of the Polish Government. The population of Poland have been abandoned by their ill-starred leaders to their fate. The Polish State and its Government have virtually ceased to exist. In view of this state of affairs, treaties concluded between the Soviet Union and Poland have ceased to operate. A situation has arisen in Poland which demands of the Soviet Government especial concern for the security of its State. Poland has become a fertile field for any accidental and unexpected contingency that may create a menace for the Soviet Union.... Nor can it be demanded of the Soviet Government that it remain indifferent to the fate of its Blood Brothers, the Ukrainians and White Russians inhabiting Poland, who even formerly were nations without rights and who now have been utterly abandoned to their fate. The Soviet Government deems it its sacred duty to extend the hand of assistance to its brother Ukrainians and White Russians inhabiting Poland."

"Germany, which has lately united 80 million Germans, has submitted certain neighboring countries to her supremacy and gained military strength in many aspects, and thus has become, as clearly can be seen, a dangerous rival to principal imperialistic powers in Europe — England and France. That is why they declared war on Germany on a pretext of fulfilling the obligations given to Poland. It is now clearer than ever, how remote the real aims of the cabinets in these countries were from the interests of defending the now disintegrated Poland or Czechoslovakia."

"Recently the ones in charge of England and France are trying to portray themselves as fighters for democratic rights of nations against Hitlerism, and more than that, the English government declared that supposedly the very goal of the war is "destruction of Hitlerism". The conlcusion is that English and French proponents of war declared something like an "ideological war", similar to the old religious wars... However, such a war has no justification for itself. The ideology of Hitlerism, like any other ideological system, can be acknowledged or rejected, it is a matter of political views. But anyone will grasp that an ideology can not be destroyed by force, a war can not put an end to it. For that reason it is not only futile, but also criminal to fight such a war as the war "for the destruction of Hitlerism" while covering yourself with false banner of "fighting for democracy"..."

"Only a fool would attack us."

"This is not the first time that our people have had to deal with an attack of an arrogant foe. At the time of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia our people’s reply was war for the fatherland, and Napoleon suffered defeat and met his doom. It will be the same with Hitler, who in his arrogance has proclaimed a new crusade against our country. The Red Army and our whole people will again wage victorious war for the fatherland, for our country, for honor, for liberty. The government of the Soviet Union expresses the firm conviction that the whole population of our country, all workers, peasants and intellectuals, men and women, will conscientiously perform their duties and do their work. Our entire people must now stand solid and united as never before. Each one of us must demand of himself and of others discipline, organization and self-denial worthy of real Soviet patriots, in order to provide for all the needs of the Red Army, Navy and Air Force, to insure victory over the enemy. The government calls upon you, citizens of the Soviet Union, to rally still more closely around our glorious Bolshevist party, around our Soviet Government, around our great leader and comrade, Stalin. Ours is a righteous cause. The enemy shall be defeated. Victory will be ours."

"We cannot lose Poland. If this line is crossed, they will grab us, too."

"As long as we live in a system of states, and as long as the roots of fascism and imperialist aggression have not finally been extirpated, our vigilance in regard to possible new violators of peace should not slacken, and concern for the strengthening of cooperation between the peace-loving powers will continue to be our most important duty."

"Someone helped us a lot with the atomic bomb. The intelligence (service) played a huge role. These Rosenbergs suffered in America. It is not excluded that they helped us. But we shouldn't really speak about it, because we might receive this kind of help in the future."

"Our scientists all the more occupy advanced positions in the development of world science. By the example of their successes in the field of atomic energy, our scientists and technicians have vividly shown how much the increased might of the Soviet state and the further growth of its international authority depends on their efforts and practical successes."

"Who can think that this eviction of Germans was undertaken only as a temporary experiment? Those who adopted the decision on the eviction of the Germans from these territories, and who understood that Poles from other Polish districts would at once move into these territories, cannot suggest after a while to carry out reverse measures. The very idea of involving millions of people in such experiments is unbelievable, quite apart from the cruelty of it, both towards the Poles and the Germans themselves."

"The trouble with free elections is that you never know how they are going to turn out."

"There is no alternative to class struggle."

"The fact that atomic war may break out, isn't that class struggle? There is no alternative to class struggle. This is a very serious question. The be-all and end-all is not peaceful coexistence. After all, we have been holding on for some time, and under Stalin we held on to the point where the imperialists felt able to demand point-blank: either surrender such and such positions, or it means war. So far the imperialists haven't renounced that."

"An atmosphere of extreme tension reigned during this period; it was necessary to act without mercy. I think that it was justified. If Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Rykov and Zinoviev had started up their opposition in wartime, there would have been an extremely difficult struggle; the number of victims would have been colossal. Colossal. The two sides would have been condemned to disaster. They had links that went right up to Hitler. That far. Trotsky had similar links, without doubt. Hitler was an adventurist, as was Trotsky, they had traits in common. And the rightists, Bukharin and Rykov, had links with them. And, of course, many of the military leaders."

"Havoc and ruin had been around him all of his days, either impending on himself or dealt by him to others. Certainly in Molotov the Soviet machine had found a capable and in many ways characteristic representative — always the faithful Party man and Communist disciple. How glad I am at the end of my life not to have had to endure the stresses which he has suffered; better to never have been born. In the conduct of foreign affairs, Mazarin, Talleyrand, Metternich, would welcome him to their company, if there be another world to which Bolsheviks allow themselves to go."

"Molotov has a fine forehead, and looks and acts like a French professor of medicine — orderly, precise, pedantic. His importance is sometimes not appreciated; he is by no means a mere figurehead, but a man of first-rate intelligence and influence. Molotov is a vegetarian and a teetotaler. Stalin gives him much of the dirty work to do. He had the nasty job of admitting how many cattle and hogs were killed by the peasants before the famine."

"One former member of [the antiparty] group [Molotov] became an ambassador. True, the country Outer Mongolia] may not be large, but it is an ambassadorship. I do not want to mention names, but you have some former Secretaries of State. I do not know where they are today, but they are not ambassadors. A second member of the group Kaganovich] is now head of the state asbestos trust. Is that punishment, to head up a big monopoly? … It is better to confess to one's errors than to persist in them."

"We went over to Lancaster House where the last hours of the conference between the wartime allies were being played out... I thought Molotov radiated evil in a way that I have never encountered before or since. Anthony Eden told me that he was the cruellest man he had ever met. In 1991 I read General Dmitri Volkoganov's biography of Stalin, described by critics as the first serious treatment of Stalin to come out of Moscow. The references to Molotov's role are chilling, and his signature appears again and again with Stalin's on documents condemning hundreds upon hundreds of men and women to death."

"Why did Churchill, so hard-headed about Hitler, maintain such illusions about Stalin’s tractability? In large part it was because the two dictators were viewed very differently in the West. In contrast with the plenitude of information available on Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the Soviet regime had remained virtually a closed book during this period. Diplomatic staff had minimal opportunity for contacts with Russian officials, let alone the ordinary population. Even ambassadors rarely met Stalin; they dealt with his foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, renowned as a hard-faced “Mr. Nyet.” Moreover the Soviet press provided virtually no useful political intelligence, in stark contrast with the media in Washington, which offered endless insights into the White House and Capitol Hill. Churchill spoke aptly in 1939 of Soviet policy as “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Then suddenly the Soviets needed outside help and the doors to the Kremlin were flung open. In the second half of 1941, Roosevelt’s emissaries Harry Hopkins and Averell Harriman and Churchill’s right-hand men Max Beaverbrook and Anthony Eden all spent hours with Stalin. Churchill met him for extended summits on five occasions, joined by Roosevelt for two of them."

"Those who try to give us advice on matters of human rights do nothing but provoke an ironic smile among us. We will not permit anyone to interfere in our affairs."

"If Soviet society is to move forward with confidence toward our great goals, each new generation must rise to an ever-higher level of learning and general cultivation, occupational skill and civic activism. One might say that such is the law of societal progress. In the context of the scientific and technological revolution, under a virtual avalanche of information, this law imposes unwontedly high demands on both those who study and those who teach—from rank-and-file classroom teachers to government ministers."

"The Soviet Union has long been proposing to outlaw chemical weapons, to remove them from the arsenals of states. We are prepared for resolution of this problem either on a global basis or piece by piece. As one of the first steps the USSR and the other socialist countries proposed in January 1984 that agreement be reached on ridding Europe of all types of chemical weapons."

"Washington's adventuristic policy, whipping up international tension to the utmost, is pushing mankind towards nuclear catastrophe."

"As a great socialist power the Soviet Union is fully aware of its responsibility to the peoples for preserving and strengthening peace. We are open to peaceful, mutually beneficial cooperation with states on all continents. We are for the peaceful settlement of all disputable international problems through serious, equal, and constructive talks."

"All this is forcing the USSR to fortify the nation's defences. The Soviet people want no arms build-up. What they want is arms reduction on both sides. But we are compelled to see to our country's essential security and also to that of our friends and allies. That is exactly what is being done. And we want everybody to remember that no adventure-seekers will ever succeed in catching us unawares, that no potential aggressor has the slightest chance of escaping a devastating retaliatory strike."

"A staleness was particularly apparent in the early 1980s, and notably under Chernenko, who died on 10 March 1985. An impression of stagnation, if not decay, became more insistent and was commented on both within and outside the Soviet Union. ‘The patient had died already on the operating table’ by 1985, although few of the top Soviet leaders understood that. Yet, underlying later counterfactuals about whether different outcomes were possible, very few commentators proved willing to predict that the Soviet bloc would soon collapse. There was an awareness in the West of its economic problems, but not of their consequences. The ability to suppress dissent in Poland in 1981 encouraged a sense that force would help deal with problems. However, the combination of Soviet economic difficulties, Soviet political sluggishness, and a much broader and better educated Soviet citizenry, indicated that the country in 1985 was very different to what had been called for and anticipated during the 1917 Revolution. Moreover, the citizenry was aware of this contrast."

"Sverdlov Hall was already nearly full...The provincial elite were all there. And it was all the usual things: people kissing each other and shouting greetings across the rows of seats, chattering about the snow and the harvest prospects and generally feeling themselves to be masters of their fate. In all the cacophony I didn't hear the name of Andropov mentioned once, not anything said about his death. At twenty minutes to eleven the hall hushed. The waiting began. With each minute the tension rose and the atmosphere felt charged with electricity...The tension reached a climax. All eyes turned towards the door...Who would come through it first? At precisely eleven, Chernenko's head appeared in the doorway. He was followed by Tikhonov, Gromyko, Ustinov, Gorbachev and the rest. The delegates' reaction was silence."

"You know, comrades, that Konstantin Ustinovich has been gravely ill for a long time, and has been in the hospital in recent months. On the part of the Fourth Main Department, all necessary measures were taken in order to treat Konstantin Ustinovich. But the illness did not submit to the cure, it started to weaken his systems first slowly, and then faster and faster. It became especially aggravated as a result of pneumonia in both lungs, which Konstantin Ustinovich developed during his vacation in Kislovodsk. There were periods when we succeeded in alleviating the lung and heart insufficiencies, and during those periods Konstantin Ustinovich found enough strength to come to work. Several times he conducted Politburo sessions, and put in work days, although shortened ones. Emphysema of the lungs and the aggravated lung and heart insufficiency had worsened significantly in the last two or three weeks. Another, accompanying illness had developed—chronic hepatitis, i.e. liver failure with its transformation into cirrhosis. The cirrhosis of the liver and the worsening dystrophic changes in the organs and tissues led to the situation where not with standing intensive therapy, which was administered actively on a daily basis, the state of his health gradually deteriorated. On March 10 at 3:00 p.m., Konstantin Ustinovich lost consciousness, and at 19:20 death occurred as a result of heart failure."

"Andropov died the following month, to be succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko, an enfeebled geriatric so zombie-like as to be beyond assessing intelligence reports, alarming or not. Having failed to prevent the NATO missile deployments, Foreign Minister Gromyko soon grudgingly agreed to resume arms control negotiations. Meanwhile Reagan was running for re-election as both a hawk and a dove: in November he trounced his Democratic opponent, Walter Mondale. And when Chernenko died in March, 1985, at the age of seventy-four, it seemed an all-too-literal validation of Reagan's predictions about "last pages" and historical "ash-heaps." Seventy-four himself at the time, the president had another line ready: "How am I supposed to get anyplace with the Russians, if they keep dying on me?""

"Re-elected in 1984, [Reagan] sought to assure the Soviet leadership that he wanted peace; he also signalled that he sought a resumption of negotiations. This was not going to be easy. Andropov had been in poor health at his accession to the General Secretaryship, and he died in February 1984. His successor Konstantin Chernenko had been Brezhnev’s personal assistant. Mental agility beyond the routine tasks of administration had never been one of his strong features and he was already badly ill with emphysema. Reagan was trying to parley at a table at which he was the solitary sitter. Yet fortune smiled on the American strategy when, in March 1985, Chernenko died and was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachëv."

"It is a fact that under equal conditions, large-scale battles and whole wars are won by troops which have a strong will for victory, clear goals before them, high moral standards, and devotion to the banner under which they go into battle."

"The nature of encounter operations required of the commanders limitless initiative and constant readiness to take the responsibility for military actions."

"If we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks exactly as it were not there."

"Nazis did not expect Soviet resistance to be so strong. The deeper they moved into this country's territory, the more fierce it became. When Hitler's armies approached Moscow, every man and woman here thought it imperative to resist the enemy. And that resistance grew by the day. The enemy was sustaining heavy losses, one after another. In fact, Hitler's best troops perished here. Nazis believed the Red Army was not capable of defending Moscow, but their schemes failed."

"Generalissimo Stalin directed every move... made every decision... He is the greatest and wisest military genius who ever lived..."

"We will do all we can to insure peace... but if war is imposed upon us we will be together shoulder to shoulder as in the last war to strive for the happiness of mankind."

"If they [the Germans] attack, we will defend. If they do not attack until winter comes, then we will and will tear them to shreds!"

"And now German generals find it hard to explain away their retreat."

"There are things in Russia which are not as they seem."

"The mere existence of atomic weapons implies the possibility of their use."

"There's no smoke without fire."

"If you feel that the Chief of the General Staff talks only rubbish, my place is not here. Better to give me a command at the front where I can be of better use!"

"The longer the battle lasts the more force we'll have to use!"

"Winning depended to a large extent on the determination of the troops and the officers. The certainty that we were going to win kept up everyone's spirits, from privates to generals."

"If the nation only knew their hands dripped with innocent blood, it would have met them not with applause but with stones."

"Here they found real war, but they were not ready for it. They were used to easy victories. This deprived them of flexibility on the one hand, of tenacity on the other. For them, war was merely maneuvers. They have neither cavalry nor skiers, their tanks cannot pass over the snow."

"The beginning of October, 1941, I was in Leningrad, commanding the troops of the Leningrad Front. Those days were difficult for all of us who had been through the September fighting for Leningrad. But our forces were succeeding in thwarting the enemy's plans. Because of the unparalleled steadfastness and mass heroism of the Soviet soldiers, sailors and noncommissioned officers and the endurance of commanders and political officers, the enemy was encountering an unsurmountable defense on the approaches to the city. By the end of September pressure was noticeably relaxed on all sectors and the front line had become stabilized. But this is not the place to tell the story of the Leningrad fighting nor of the attempted seizure of the city named for the great Lenin. I mention it only to emphasize that all of us, from the Military Council of the front down to the city's ordinary defenders, in those days lived with but a single thought: to stop the enemy no matter what. Everyone did all he could in his assigned post."

"West of Maloyaroslavets I met the commander of the local fortified area, Colonel Smirnov, who reported on the progress of fortification work, the availability of worker battalions and the equipment of the military units capable of defending the approaches to Maloyaroslavets. After I had instructed him to organize reconnaissance and to get his fortified area into fighting shape, I drove on to Medyn. I found no one there except an old woman who was rummaging around a house that had been hit by a bomb. "Granny, what are you doing here?" I asked. She stood there with wide-open, wandering eyes and disheveled gray hair and said nothing. "What's the matter, Granny?" Without replying, the woman went back to digging. Another woman, half-dressed and carrying a half-filled sack, appeared from the ruins. "Don't bother asking her," she said, "she won't say anything. She has lost her mind with grief." She told me that two days before German plans had bombed and strafed the town. Many people had been killed. The residents were getting ready to leave for Maloyaroslavets. The old woman had lived in this house with a little grandson and granddaughter. She was at the well getting water when the raid began. She saw a bomb hit her house. Somewhere under the ruins were the bodies of her grandchildren."

"The second woman had to hurry; her home had also been destroyed and she could not find her shoes and clothes in the rubble. Tears rolled down her cheeks. When asked whether any of our troops had passed through the town, she said that during the night several trucks had driven through toward Maloyaroslavets, followed by horse-drawn carts bearing the wounded. There had been nothing since then. I said good-bye and drove on toward Yukhnov, deeply regretting that there was nothing I could say to console this woman or any of the other Soviet people to whom the war had brought such terrible grief."

"Everyone worked day and night. People literally collapsed from fatigue and lack of sleep. But everyone did all he could at his post- sometimes even the impossible. Driven by a feeling of personal responsibility for the fate of Moscow, the fate of the homeland, generals and staff officers, commanders and political commissars of all ranks demonstrated unprecedented energy and dedication in seeking to organize ground and aerial reconnaissance, the firm control of all forces and a steady flow of supplies, and in promoting political and party work, to raise the morale of troops and to inculcate into every soldier a confidence in his own strength and in the inevitable defeat of the enemy on the approaches to Moscow."

"Brilliant episodes in the chronicle of those hard days were recorded by the heroic defenders of the city of Tula. Unfortunately, this aspect of the defense has not yet been adequately covered in the Soviet histories of the war. And yet it would be difficult to exaggerate the role that the defense of Tula played in the Battle for Moscow. The city was defended by armed workers detachments and units of the Fiftieth Army that had pulled back to Tula. Particular steadfastness and courage were demonstrated by the Tula workers regiment under A. P. Gorshkov, commander, and G. A. Ageyev, political commissar. That regiment suffered heavy losses, but did not allow the enemy to enter the city. Nor did the workers of Tula lose their nerve when the enemy virtually closed the ring around the city. Together with the troops of the Fiftieth Army they continued to fight until the end, showing a high degree of organization, steadiness and courage. And they did hold out."

"No matter how hard the enemy tried to take Tula and thus open the road to Mosocw from the south, he was unable to do so in the course of November. The city held out like an invulnerable fortress. Tula tied down the entire right flank of the German forces. When the enemy ultimately decided to by-pass Tula, Guderian's army was forced to split its forces, losing the operational effectiveness provided by tactical concentration. That is why Tula and its citizens played such an outstanding role in the defense of Moscow. Tula, ancient city of Russian gunmakers, thus became an unconquerable outpost of the capital thanks to the solidarity and self-sacrifice of its citizens, who fought with or helped our soldiers in every possible way. I don't think I would be far wrong if I said that the glory given to Moscow as a hero city belongs also to Tula and its people."

"When we speak here of heroic feats, we obviously have in mind not only our soldiers, commanders and political commissars. What was achieved at the front in October and subsequent battles was made possible by the common and united efforts of Soviet troops and the people of Moscow and the Moscow area, unanimously supported by the entire nation. The wide-ranging activities of the Party organization of the city of Moscow and the Moscow area in rallying the working people in defense of the capital against the enemy took on the character of a heroic epic. The fiery appeals of the Party's Central Committee and of the city and regional Party organizations awakened a deep response in the heart of every Muscovite, every soldier and the entire Soviet people. The working people of Moscow vowed to fight to the last with the soldiers rather than let the enemy through to the capital. And they kept that vow with honor."

"When I am asked what I remember most of all of the past war, I always answer: the Battle for Moscow. A quarter of a century has passed, but these historic events and battles still remain in memory. Under hectic, almost catastrophically complicated and difficult conditions our troops were tempered, matured, accumulated experience and, once the absolutely essential minimum of arms were in their hands, moved from retreat and defensive maneuver to a powerful offensive. Our grateful descendants will never forget the difficult and heroic sacrifices of the Soviet people and the military achievements of the Soviet armed forces during that period. The Battle for Moscow laid the firm foundations for the ensuing defeat of Nazi Germany."

"To the Soviet soldier"

"I find it rather difficult in the evening of my life to recollect everything that happened as time has erased from memory many things, especially relating to childhood and youth."

"We proceeded from the knowledge that we would have to fight a battle-wise, strong and stubborn enemy."

"After the Military Council of the front had looked over the ravaged city, they reported to the Supreme Commander: "The Fascist barbarians have destroyed Warsaw, capital of Poland. With sadistic cruelty they demolished one block of houses after another. The largest of industrial enterprises have been razed to the ground. Dwelling houses have been either blown up or burnt down. Municipal economy is disrupted. Thousands upon thousands of civilians have been annihilated, the rest driven out. It is a dead city." Listening to people from Warsaw tell about Nazi atrocities during the occupation and especially before the retreat, it was hard to understand the psychology and moral make-up of the enemy. Polish men and officers took these stories especially hard. I saw battle-scarred Polish soldiers shed tears and pledge then and there to take revenge upon the fiendish foe. As for Soviet soldiers, we were all embittered and filled with determination to punish the enemy well for the atrocities committed. Boldly breaking down all enemy resistance, the troops were rapidly gaining ground."

"The Berlin Operation holds a place of special prominence as the final operation of the Second World War in Europe. The capture of Berlin meant the final solution of paramount military-political issues on which largely depended the post-war settlement in Germany and her place in the political life of Europe. In making ready for the last bout with Fascism, the Soviet armed forces meticulously proceeded from the agreed Allied policy of the unconditional surrender of Germany both in the military and economic, and in the political fields. Our major objective in this phase of the war was the complete eradication of Fascism in the social and state system of Germany and to bring all of the major Nazi criminals to book for their atrocities, mass murders, wholesale destruction and outrages upon the peoples of the occupied countries, particularly in our own long-suffering land."

"The Battle for Berlin was a life or death struggle. From the very depths of Mother Russia, from Moscow and from the Hero Cities of Stalingrad and Leningrad, from the Ukraine, from Byelorussia, from the Baltic, Caucasian and other republics our men had come here to finish the just war against those who had encroached upon the freedom of their country. Many of them still bore the fresh wounds of previous battles. In Berlin the wounded did not leave the battle-field. They all pressed forward yielding to no one the right of way. It was as if there had been no four years of grim fighting, as if everything had risen afresh in order to accomplish this great deed and to hoist the banner of victory over Berlin. In all actions our soldiers displayed great inspiration and daring. The maturity of our army and its growth during the war years were fully reflected in the Battle of Berlin."

"Many indeed were the thoughts that whirled through my head in those minutes of rejoicing! The fearsome battle at Moscow where our troops had made a stand to the death without letting the enemy through to the capital, and Stalingrad lying in ruins but unvanquished, and the glorious Leningrad which had repelled the furious onslaught of the enemy and which had withstood a terrible blockade, and Sevastapol which had fought so heroically against hand-picked Nazi troops, and the triumph of victory at the Kursk Salient, and the thousands of devastated villages and towns, the many millions of human lives sacrificed by the Soviet people who had heroically stuck it out during those grim years. And here at last was the most cherished goal, for the sake of which our people had borne such immense suffering- the complete rout of Fascist Germany, the rout of the monstrous Fascism, and the triumph of our just cause."

"With my new instructions I returned to Berlin. The very day after my arrival I was visited by General of the Army Eisenhower with his numerous retinue, amongst whom was General Spaatz, Chief of the US Strategic Air Command. We received General Eisenhower at the Headquarters of the front in Wedenschlosse. Present at the meeting was A. Ya. Vyshinsky. We greeted each other like soldiers, and, I may say, in a friendly way. Taking both my hands in his, Eisenhower looked me over for a long time, then said, "So that's what you're like.""

"Outwardly Eisenhower impressed me favourably. On June 5 Eisenhower, Montgomery and de Lattre de Tassigny arrived in Berlin to sign the declaration on the defeat of Germany and the assumption of supreme authority in Germany by Governments of the USSR, the US, Britain and France. Before the formal meeting, Eisenhower came to my headquarters to confer upon me a high American military award: I was made Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit. On receiving the award, I immediately called Stalin and told him about it. Stalin said: "We should decorate Eisenhower and Montgomery with Orders of Victory and de Lattre de Tassigny with the Order of Suvorov, First Class." "May I tell them about it?" I asked. Stalin said I could."

"At the ceremony of signing the decoration I met Field-Marshal Montgomery for the first time. During the war I had closely followed the actions of British troops under his command. In 1940 the British Expeditionary Corps had sustained a disastrous setback at Dunkirk. Later, British troops under Montgomery's command had smashed the German corps under General Rommel at El Alamein. During the Normandy landing Montgomery had ably commanded the Allied forces and their advance to the banks of the Seine. Montgomery was above medium height, very agile, soldierly, trim and created an impression of a lively and intelligent man. He began to talk about the operations at El Alamein and at Stalingrad. In his view the two operations were of equal significance. I did not want to belittle the merits of the British troops, but still I had to explain to him that the El Alamein operation was carried out on an army scale, while at Stalingrad the operation engaged a group of fronts and it had a vast strategic importance- it resulted in the rout of a major enemy force in the area of the Volga and Don rivers and later, in the North Caucasus. It was an operation that actually marked a radical turning-point in the war and ensured the retreat of the German forces from our country."

"I have dedicated this book to the Soviet soldier. It is with his blood and sweat that the victory over the powerful enemy was gained. He knew how to face mortal danger, he displayed a supreme valour and heroism. There is no limit to the greatness of his exploit in the name of his Motherland. The Soviet soldier deserves that grateful humanity should erect him a monument to stand in the ages to come. Brilliant examples were set by officers of all ranks- from junior lieutenants to marshals- ardent patriots of their country, experienced and fearless organizers of the multi-million strong armed forces in military actions. Those who make a difference between the Soviet soldier and officer make a bad mistake, for equal in origin, way of thinking and acting, they are equally loyal to, and are true sons of, their Motherland."

"The greatness of heroic victory over Fascist Germany is in the fact that the Soviet Union did not defend the socialist state alone, but that it selflessly fought to defend the internationalist proletarian goal- defeat the bulk of the Nazi armed forces and deliver the peoples of Europe from occupation. The Soviet people have not forgotten other peoples' contribution to the victory over the common enemy. Our army and people remember and value the courage of the Resistance fighters."

"The Soviet Union is a peaceful country. The people's every goal serves the construction of Communism. They do not need war to attain their goal. But to protect the Soviet people's peaceful labour we must study our military experience in defending the socialist motherland, and make use of what will help us ensure the country's defences in the most effective way and train and rear our Armed Forces in the right spirit."

"The risks of war present no danger to those who are well prepared for it in advance and who are mindful of their place in the nation's defences. Confusion and panic usually appear wherever there is no adequate organizaton or appropriate leadership at a time of grim trials."

"With the technological revolution in the military field and the enormous organizational reconstruction of the army and navy, and now that their prime shock force is made up of rocketry, voices may quite frequently be heard asserting that this is an era of "push-button warfare" where man plays nothing but an auxiliary role. This view is wrong. Without arguing the great importance of rocketry and nuclear weapons, it is a fact that regardless of the scale, nature or method of warfare, man always played, and will go on playing, a major role in it. War will still require the participation of large masses of manpower- in one case directly in the armed struggle, in another, in war production and the comprehensive material backing of armed struggle."

"Perhaps the best epitaph for Zhukov was written by an Indian diplomat, K.P. Menon, in a different context, years before the marshal died, when Zhukov was being hounded by sycophants and ideologists under Nikita Krushchev, so officially that he had become a so-called non-person. Menon wrote: "No star shone in the Russian firmament after Stalin's death with greater lustre than Zhukov's.""

"Zhukov has thus emerged in his twilight years to take his proper place in Soviet history. The resurrection of this great soldier, first a patriot and only then a Party member, can be viewed as an attempt by Brezhnev and his fellow leaders to give credit where credit is due and to make Soviet history a more factual record of events. Zhukov still commands the loyalty of many Russians in all walks of life, especially the veterans of World War II. Zhukov is an enduring symbol of victory on the battlefield."

"So that's what you're like."

"None were any good in 1941. Of Budyenny (Semyon Budyonny), who commanded the armies facing me, a captured Russian officer aptly remarked — ‘He is a man with a very large moustache, but a very small brain.’ But in later years there is no doubt of the improvement in their generalship. Zhukov was very good. It is interesting to recall that he first studied strategy in Germany under General von Seeckt - this was about 1921-23."

"The name of Marshal Georgi Zhukov, the distinguished Soviet military leader of World War II and a controversial postwar minister of defense, conjures up a picture of a severe and ruthless Soviet commander, one of the few who appeared never to have lost a battle, and who was allowed by Stalin out of the shadows which normally surround Soviet personalities briefly, at least, to share some of the glory of Soviet victories during the war. No one would deny that a good and accurate biography of a soldier of Zhukov's status and achievements has been lacking for some time. After all, lives of most of the outstanding Allied and German commanders have been available for many years. Scholars, historians, and the general public have long awaited a biography of their most successful Soviet counterpart- a man who, in the closing stages of the war, had under his direct operational command fourteen field armies and many thousands of tanks and aircraft."

"In spite of the biographer's best efforts, the Soviet military leader remains personally a shadowy figure. We cannot see him at home, with his wife, children, and grandchildren, nor can we learn much about his personal likes or dislikes, his family life, his moments of despair and elation. Although Soviet secrecy plays a strong part in formulating these restrictions, they are to some extent also in the tradition of Russian letters, and any biographer of Marshal Zhukov who resits his case, as Chaney does, on the strictest accuracy of the utilization of his source material, has to make his book a study of Zhukov the soldier and relatively little of Zhukov the man."

"The Soviet marshal Georgi Zhukov is much less famous in the West than generals such as Dwight D. Eisenhower and Bernard Montgomery, but he was undoubtedly the greatest commander of the Second World War, turning the tide against the Nazi invaders at Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad, and then leading the Red Army in its bloody counteroffensive all the way to Berlin. Without the heroic Soviet effort, with its sacrifice of 26 million lives, the war might have ended very differently. Zhukov was a communist and a ruthless Stalinist general who placed results far above his concern for individuals and casualties and used summary executions at the front to enforce discipline. Yet he was also a gifted leader who represents not the cruelty of his master, Soviet dictator Stalin, but the heroism of the Russian people."

"On March 31 Stalin received a message from Eisenhower, intended to improve coordination between their armies. The Allied commander stated that his troops were now thrusting toward Leipzig, south of Berlin, rather than the German capital. Given the mindset in the Kremlin, the message was probably dismissed as sinister disinformation. Next day Stalin summoned Zhukov and Ivan Koniev, his two top marshals, and asked: “Who is going to take Berlin: are we or the Allies?” There was one only possible answer, and Koniev gave it immediately: “It is we who shall take Berlin, and we will take it before the Allies.” With his flanks now secured, Stalin cannily unleashed Zhukov and Koniev—two bitter rivals—in their own personal race for Berlin. That same day, April 1, he cabled Eisenhower that Berlin had “lost its former strategic importance” and that the Soviets would send only second-rate forces against it, sometime in May. “However, this plan may undergo certain alterations, depending on circumstances.” Historian Antony Beevor has described this message as “the greatest April Fool in modern history."

"Has a strong will. Decisive and firm. Often demonstrates initiative and skillfully applies it. Disciplined. Demanding and persistent in his demands. A somewhat ungracious and not sufficiently sympathetic person. Rather stubborn. Painfully proud. In professional terms well trained. Broadly experienced as a military leader... Absolutely cannot be used in staff or teaching jobs because constitutionally he hates them."

"Zhukov was always a man of strong will and decisiveness, brilliant and gifted, demanding, firm and purposeful. All these qualities, unquestionably, are necessary in a great military leader and they were inherent in Zhukov. It is true that sometimes his toughness exceeded what was permissible. For example, in the heat of the fighting around Moscow Zhukov sometimes displayed unjustified sharpness."

"The truth was that one of the great military disasters of our time was in the making on the night of June 21-22, 1941- the colossal tactical surprise which Hitler's armies achieved over the Russians. Within hours the Soviet Air Force would lie burnt, wrecked, destroyed on the ground, its commanders facing the firing squad or cheating the executioner by suicide. The flower of the Red Army would be staggering east, some units decimated, many without arms, others virtually exterminated. Hundreds of thousands of troops would find themselves fatally trapped and encircled, scores or even hundreds of miles behind the spearheads of the advancing Nazi panzers. Within a few weeks German armies would stand at the gates of Leningrad, Kiev and Moscow, and the fate of the Soviet state would hang in the balance. As the clock ticked away that long spring evening, it brought Stalin and his Russia minute by minute closer to disaster. By the same token it propelled Zhukov into perhaps the most striking military career of the century."

"The names of many military men may be better known in the West- England's Montgomery, Germany's Rommel and Guderian, de Gaulle of France, America's Eisenhower, MacArthur and Patton. But when history has completed its painful task of evaluation, when the grain of achievement is sifted from the chaff of notoriety, it seems certain that the name which will stand above all others as the master of the art of mass warfare in the twentieth century will be that of this broad-beamed, fierce, determined man who turned the tide of battle against the Nazis, against Hitler, not once but time after time after time."

"The engagements in which Zhukov won his reputation were so massive that, inevitably, many outstanding Soviet military men were involved- either under Zhukov's command or in coordinated and associated movements. There was then, and there continued for years to be, a raging competition for military glory in these engagements. Deep lines of political cleavage and quarrels also underlay the military disputes. Not only military glory was involved; political intrigue, intra-Party quarrels, high-level Kremlin politics were at issue. The principal military rivals of Zhukov were his fellow marshals, Ivan S. Konev, Rodion Malinovsky, V. I. Chuikov, A. I. Yeremenko, Semyon Timonshenko, and to a lesser extent men like K. K. Rokossovsky, V. D. Sokolovsky, and the staff chiefs, A. M. Vasilevsky, Boris Shaposhnikov and, later on, S. M. Shtemenko. Rivals of a different category were Stalin's cronies, men like Voroshilov and Budenny, and police generals such as L. Z. Mekhlis and G. I. Kulik."

"Yet at the end of the war Zhukov's prestige was so enormous that he shared the podium with Stalin at the great Moscow victory parade in June, 1945, and entertained as his guest his fellow commander and friend, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The two men were not merely military associates, fellow members of the Kommendatura in Berlin. They had genuine empathy. Both were popular figures, heroes in their countries, nonpolitical men, men with a rather simplistic view of life. Eisenhower came to Moscow as Zhukov's guest. He invited Zhukov to visit America as his guest. Zhukov accepted. To many it seemed that Zhukov's prestige was such that he might well be Stalin's first minister and probable successor. It seemed that in any event the influence of Zhukov and of the other great Soviet generals would be such that they would dominate postwar Soviet political life. The calculations failed. They did not take into account Stalin and the nature of Kremlin politics. Zhukov never had a chance to make his visit to the United States as Ike's guest. Indeed, he never even met his old friend Ambassador Smith in Moscow."

"You must remember that we persecute nobody for religion. We regard religion as an error and fight it with education."

"The national question is purely a peasant question...the best way to eliminate nationality is a massive factory with thousands of workers..., which like a millstone grinds up all nationalities and forges a new nationality. This nationality is the universal proletariat."

"The Jews will become socialist colonisers with strong fists and sharp teeth, a strong national group within the Soviet family of nations."

"For thousands of years humankind's finest minds have been struggling with the theoretical problem of finding the forms that would give peoples the possibility, without the greatest of torment, without internecine strife, of living side by side in friendship and brotherhood. Practically speaking, the first step in this direction is only being taken now, today."

"But even now, after the greatest victory known to history we cannot for one minute forget the basic fact that our country remains the one socialist state in the world. You will speak frankly about this to the collective farmers...Only the most concrete, most immediate danger, which threatened us from Hitlerite Germany, has disappeared."

"The whole history of my life, and in essence the whole history of the working class consists of this: that we have lived and fought under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin."

"These [traits] are first: love, love for his people, love for the working masses...Second, honesty...Third, courage...Fourth, comradely solidarity...Fifth, love for labor. Not only love but an honest attitude to labor, firmly bearing in mind that if a man lives, eats and does not work, this means that he eats someone else's labor."

"The contingencies of the moment may justify the omission of certain conveniences in the building of temporary accommodations."

"If you are called upon to govern humans, treat them humanely."

"Like Lenin Comrade Stalin is a leader of a higher type. He is a mountain eagle, without fear in the fight, who boldly leads the bolshevik party on unexplored roads toward the total victory of Communism."

"If Soviet Union were to fire over this zone with nuclear weapons directed at France, or if, conversely, the Americans or the French were to fire over this territory with nuclear weapons towards Russia, the resulting radioactive clouds would be driven into this territory by the west winds from the one side, and the east winds from the other, and the Soviet Union could certainly not request the winds to keep to a specific path."

"All peoples enjoy freedom, and freedom for the development of their culture... There is no Jewish problem in the Soviet Union at all... I have many friends who are Jews."

"Stalin's methods did not help."

"The principle of collective leadership is elementary for a proletarian party and for a party of the Lenin type. Nevertheless, we must emphasize this old truth, because for about 20 years we have had practically no collective leadership; there flourished the cult of the individual which was condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin. And this, of course, could not but reflect negatively on the position of the party and its work."

"We are watching the Germans closely; we are not forgetting what they did to us during the war."

"Ordinary people abroad take a better attitude toward men who come as guests with their wives. And if they are accompanied by other members of their family, that disposes people even more favorably toward them. Therefore, I would propose that Khrushchev take Nina Petrovna with him and also include in the delegation other members of his family. This will be well received by ordinary Americans, and that would be better for us."

"If Stalin could only see us now, with the American Ambassador here, he'd turn in his grave."

"While Zinoviev is in the majority he is for iron discipline.... When he is in the minority... he is against it."

"We think we have got freedom of the press. When one millionaire has ten newspapers and ten million people have no newspapers—that is not freedom of the press."

"We are accused of all sorts of terrible things, of us wanting to undermine your market, of dumping and so forth. There was no such talk before, but when you had your recession, there were people who wanted to put the whole blame on the Russians. All these fables of us being such terrible devils are not well founded. We want to trade in earnest and well."

"One former member of [the antiparty] group [Molotov] became an ambassador. True, the country [Outer Mongolia] may not be large, but it is an ambassadorship. I do not want to mention names, but you have some former Secretaries of State. I do not know where they are today, but they are not ambassadors. A second member of the group [Kaganovich] is now head of the state asbestos trust. Is that punishment, to head up a big monopoly? … It is better to confess to one's errors than to persist in them."

"We cannot, after all, ignore the fact that the cold war is being fostered from the U.S. No one will deny that American bases around our country are not being reduced; in fact they are being strengthened. All of this is bound to cause suspicion, and it is bound to cause the Soviet leaders to be cautious and vigilant."

"There are no U.S. flyers in our country. The bodies were handed over to the Americans. We have no other bodies of flyers or living flyers in the Soviet Union. If we had, why should we try to hide them?"

"If Kocharyan wins honestly, I will shake him by the hand tonight."

"Terrorism has no motherland and terrorists have no nationality."

"I will fight for really fair elections. I think they will be fair."

"The relations between Armenia and Russia are developing dynamically and in the right direction. The two countries often hold the same position on many events and there is no serious disagreement."

"I used to work in this building for years and on returning here I intend to do everything possible to secure normal human life for the Armenian people."

"Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony."

"[The world may end up] under a Sword of Damocles … on a tightrope over the abyss."

"Andrey Gromyko, a key senior member of the Politburo, who had been Foreign Minister since 1957, maintained continuity in foreign policy. An expert on relations with the USA, where he served at Washington from 1939, before becoming Delegate to the United Nations from 1946 to 1949, Gromyko saw the world almost exclusively through the prism of Soviet-American relations. He did not seek a breakthrough with the USA. Instead, under Gromyko, Soviet foreign policy was nearly as rigid as he was unsmiling. Certainly, there was no bold initiative comparable to Nixon’s approach to China, nor, subsequently, any Soviet ability to retrieve the situation in China. At the same time, there were changes and openings before the rise of Gorbachev. In September 1984, Gromyko travelled to Washington to meet Reagan, and in January 1985 the Politburo decided to engage again in arms negotiations with the USA."

"Do you know that there’s hardly anyone left of last year’s Caucasian governments? I’ve tried to stop it, but in vain. Yet they can’t all be Trotskyites and traitors."

"The enemies of the Soviet state calculate that the heavy loss we have borne will lead to disorder and confusion in our ranks. But their expectations are in vain: bitter disillusionment awaits them. He who is not blind sees that our party, during its difficult days, is closing its ranks still more closely, that it is united and unshakable."

"To produce a maximum of chaos in the culture of the enemy is our first most important step. Our fruits are grown in chaos, distrust, economic depression and scientific turmoil. At least a weary populace can seek peace only in our offered Communist State, at last only Communism can resolve the problems of the masses."

"In a Capitalistic state you are aided on all sides by the corruption of the philosophy of man and the times. You will discover that everything will aid you in your campaign to seize, control and use all "mental healing" to spread our doctrine and rid us of our enemies within their own borders."

"By psychopolitics create chaos. Leave a nation leaderless. Kill our enemies. And bring to Earth, through Communism, the greatest peace Man has ever known."

"If we can effectively kill the national pride and patriotism of just one generation, we will have won that country. Therefore we must continue propaganda abroad to undermine the loyalty of citizens in general and of teen-agers in particular."

"The dilemma between satisfying workers' pent up demands and defending the socialist state was precisely the challenge of the new Soviet leadership after Stalin. The group that had come to power—Georgii Malenkov as premier, Lavrentii Beriia as head of the secret police, Nikita Khrushchev as party first secretary, Viacheslav Molotov as foreign minister, Nikolai Bulganin as defense minister—feared the collapse of Communist rule as much as they feared and distrusted each other. Through his brutality and the respect he commanded, Stalin had been the guarantor of Communist rule and the final adjudicator of all things political. With him gone, his Kremlin successors all agreed that tension had to be reduced and compromises found if the Soviet state and its alliances were not to be seriously threatened. The first signal of new policies was the sudden release of the Jewish doctors arrested by Stalin, who were accused of trying to murder him and other Soviet leaders. Beriia, as the former head of the secret police, may have tried to cover his own tracks by announcing that this and other cases were violations of “socialist legality.” Unnerved by Beriia’s vigorous involvement in policy-making, the other leaders conspired against him, and he was arrested in July 1953 and executed by the end of the year. According to several witnesses, General Pavel Batitskii, the commander of the Moscow Air Defense Region, shot the most feared man in Russia through the head at close range when he would not willingly walk to the execution ground."

"In the same directive he raised the question – this was in the middle of 1934 – that now that Hitler had come to power it was quite clear that his, Trotsky’s line on the impossibility of building up socialism in one country alone had been completely justified, that war was inevitable, and that if we Trotskyites wished to preserve ourselves as a political force of some sort, we must in advance, having adopted a defeatist position, not merely passively observe and contemplate, but actively prepare the way for this defeat. But in order to do so, cadres must be formed, and cadres could not be formed by talk alone. Therefore the necessary wrecking activities must be carried on now. I recall that Trotsky said in this directive that without the necessary support from foreign states, a government of the bloc could neither come to power nor hold power. It was therefore a question of arriving at the necessary preliminary agreement with the most aggressive foreign states, like Germany and Japan, and the he, Trotsky, on his part had already taken the necessary steps in establishing contacts both with the Japanese and the German governments."

"During the period while I was detached temporarily from the Gold Trust and assigned to work in copper mines, I had an opportunity to observe at first hand the actions of Yuri Pyatakov, the vice commissar executed in 1937, after he had confessed to leadership of a wrecking ring. I went to Berlin in the spring of 1931 with a large purchasing commission headed by Pyatakov; my job was to offer technical advice on purchases of mining machinery. Some things happened on that occasion which I never understood until I read Pyatakov's testimony at his trial in 1937."

"Among other things, the commission in Berlin was buying several dozen mine hoists, ranging from 100 to 1,000 horse-power. Ordinarily, these hoists consist of drums, shafting, bearings, gears, and so on, placed on a foundation of I or H beams. The commission asked for quotations on the basis of pfennigs per kilogram. After some discussion, the German concerns later mentioned in Pyatakov's confession reduced their prices between 5 and 6 pfennigs per kilogram. When I studied these proposals, I discovered that the firms had substituted cast-iron bases weighing several tons for the light steel provided in the specifications, which would reduce the cost of production per kilogram, but increase the weight, and therefore the cost to the purchaser."

"Naturally, I was pleased to make this discovery, and reported to the members of the commission with a sense of triumph. But these men were distinctly lukewarm; they even brought considerable pressure on me to persuade me to approve the deal. I couldn't figure out their attitude. I finally told the commission members flatly that they would have to make such purchases on their own responsibility, and that I would see that my own contrary advice got on the record. Only then did they drop the proposal."

"At the time I attributed their attitude to obstinate stupidity, or perhaps some personal graft. But this incident was fully explained by Pyatakov's subsequent confession. The matter was so arranged that Pyatakov could have gone back to Moscow and showed that he had been very successful in reducing prices, but at the same time would have paid out money for a lot of worthless cast iron and enabled the Germans to give him very substantial rebates. According to his own statement, he got away with the same trick on some other mines, although I blocked this one."

"Every time they say that what's happening in the country is... Stalin's fault. It's the moral of every speech: Stalin's guilty, it was Stalin, Stalin, Stalin, everyone against him. But Stalin died 35 years ago! 35 years! What does that have to do with today's troubles?"

"First, Stalin is disowned, now, little by little, it gets to prosecute socialism, the October Revolution, and in no time they will also want to prosecute Lenin and Marx."

"Iosif Vissarionovich was a really cautious man. Really cautious. A man who could see far."

"Without Stalin's politics, we would never have achieved anything, we would all have died."

"One former member of [the antiparty] group Molotov] became an ambassador. True, the country Outer Mongolia] may not be large, but it is an ambassadorship. I do not want to mention names, but you have some former Secretaries of State. I do not know where they are today, but they are not ambassadors. A second member of the group [Kaganovich] is now head of the state asbestos trust. Is that punishment, to head up a big monopoly? … It is better to confess to one's errors than to persist in them."

"Crimean Tatars will not be returned to Crimea...You will live in Uzbekistan forever. There are decrees of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on this."

"I repeat, you will not go anywhere, we have a common homeland for the USSR. People live in Crimea, and there is no place for you there."

"Nasriddinova insists that we should eat Uzbek bread, in Crimea they think we are robbers and lazy people. Where should we go?! The moon?"

"We understand Comrade Y.S. Nasriddinova wants the Crimean Tatar people only as a labor force, without a national homeland and without national equality..."

"They want to go to Crimea, but no one is waiting for them there. If they want to leave, then let them find their place in Kazan."

"After warning the stenographers not to record his speech, he attacked Crimean Tatars as an "irresponsible people" for wanting return to their homeland and be so as an equal as all other peoples of the USSR."

"Our foreign policy is also a class policy, because our Party follows a steady, persistent and honest peace policy which simultaneously stands unstakeably on the principles of proletarian internationalism and solidarity with the struggle of the peoples for freedom and social progress. There is no contradiction in this. We do not expect that the monopolistic bourgeoisie and the governments which are executing their will will endorse under the conditions of detente the revolu­tionary struggle of the proletariat or the national liberation struggle of the oppressed peoples. The Soviet Union does not put such demands on the West. But one should not demand of the Soviet Union to sacrifice its solidarity with those who are struggling against exploitation and colonial oppression."

"Washington and its NATO partners more and more often resort in international relations to the policy of blackmail and crude pressure. They try to impudently force their will on other countries and nations. Imperialist bigwigs put forward adventurist doctrines of either a "limited" nuclear war or a war with the use of only conventional, non-nuclear weapons."

"The Soviet people have boundless trust in their Communist Party, they trust it because for the party there have never been and are no other interests than the vital interests of the Soviet people. To justify this trust means to go ahead along the road of Communist construction, to work for the further progress of our socialist homeland."

"We shall do everything possible for further increasing cohesion of the great community of socialist states, the unity of the ranks of Communists of the whole world in the struggle for common aims and ideals. We shall guard and develop our solidarity and our cooperation with the countries that have gained freedom from colonial oppression, with the struggle of the peoples for national independence and social progress. We shall always be loyal to the cause of the struggle for peace, for the relaxation of international tension."

"It’s necessary to create conditions-economic and organizational-that will stimulate good-quality, productive labor, initiative and enterprise. Conversely, poor work, sluggishness and irresponsibility should have an immediate and inescapable effect on the remuneration, job status and moral prestige of personnel."

"The imperialists have not given up the scheme of economic war against the Socialist countries, of interfering in their internal affairs in the hope of eroding their social system, and are trying to win military superiority over the U.S.S.R., over all the countries of the Socialist community. Of course, these plans are sure to fail. It is not given to anyone to turn back the course of historical development."

"In America and in our country there are nuclear weapons—terrible weapons that can kill millions of people in an instant. But we do not want them to be ever used. That's precisely why the Soviet Union solemnly declared throughout the entire world that never—never—will it use nuclear weapons first against any country. In general we propose to discontinue further production of them and to proceed to the abolition of all the stockpiles on earth."

"The Soviet state has successfully overcome many trials, including crucial ones, during the six and a half decades of its existence. Those who encroached on the integrity of our state, its independence and our system found themselves on the garbage heap of history. It is high time that everyone to whom this applies understood that we shall be able to insure the security of our country, the security of our friends and allies under any circumstances. The Soviet people can rest assured that our country's defense capability is being maintained at such a level that it would not be advisable for anyone to stage a trial of strength. On our part, we do not seek a trial of strength. The very thought of it is alien to us."

"As it is, we are living in too brittle a world. That is why responsible statesmen must evaluate the developments and adopt a rational decision. It is human reason alone that can and must save mankind from the grave danger. We call on those who are pushing the world along the road of the ever more dangerous arms race to give up their unrealizable hopes of thus achieving military superiority in order to dictate their will to other peoples and states. The Soviet Union is convinced that peace can be strengthened and the security of peoples guaranteed not by way of building up and inventing ever new types of armaments but, on the contrary, by way of reducing the existing armaments to immeasurably lower levels."

"The Soviet Union, and we stress this again, does not strive for military superiority, and we will do only what is absolutely necessary to prevent the military balance from being disrupted."

"The Soviet Union declares with all firmness and in no uncertain terms that it remains an adherent of the principled course of ending the arms race, first of all the nuclear arms race, of lessening and ultimately totally removing the threat of nuclear war. It will further exert every effort for the attainment of these lofty aims."

"Our nerves are strong, and we do not base our policy on emotions."

"Decided on by NATO ministers on 12 December 1979, in response to the deployment of Soviet SS-20 intermediate range ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe, and despite considerable West German division and reluctance, the Cruise and Pershing missiles arrived from November 1983. Their deployment demonstrated the continued strength and effectiveness of the Western alliance. In addition, American rhetoric, notably Reagan’s ‘evil empire’ speech, which in some respects matched a longstanding Soviet pattern in rhetoric, rankled the Soviet leaders. Moreover, the American invasion of the unstable, left-wing Caribbean island of Grenada in October 1983 accentuated Soviet concern about American actions and intentions. Yuri Andropov, the Soviet leader from 1982 to 1984, interpreted these actions to support his suspicions of the USA, and he suspended Soviet participation in the arms-control talks in Geneva. Andropov came out of Gosbes (State Security) and was a genuine ideologue. He believed in the inherent mendacity of Western imperialist leaders and society, and in imperialists’ treachery and willingness to wage war against the Soviet Union. However, there was no precipitant to conflict, in part due to Soviet caution and in part because the Soviet Union could not afford war."

"A second escape from determinism involved the discrediting of dictatorships. Tyrants had been around for thousands of years; but George Orwell's great fear, while writing 1984 on his lonely island in 1948, was that the progress made in restraining them in the 18th and 19th centuries had been reversed. Despite the defeats of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, it would have been hard to explain the first half of the 20th century without concluding that the currents of history had come to favor authoritarian politics and collectivist economics. Like Irish monks at the edge of their medieval world, Orwell at the edge of his was seeking to preserve what little was left of civilization by showing what a victory of the barbarians would mean. Big Brothers controlled the Soviet Union, China, and half of Europe by the time 1984 came out. It would have been Utopian to expect that they would stop there. But they did: the historical currents during the second half of the 20th century turned decisively against communism. Orwell himself had something to do with this: his anguished writings, together with the later and increasingly self-confident ones of Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Havel, and the future pope Karol Wojtyla, advanced a moral and spiritual critique of Marxism-Leninism for which it had no answer. It took time for these sails to catch wind and for these rudders to take hold, but by the late 1970s they had begun to do so. John Paul II and the other actor-leaders of the 1980s then set the course. The most inspirational alternatives the Soviet Union could muster were Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, a clear sign that dictatorships were not what they once had been."

"Brezhnev died in November 1982 and the USSR acquired Yuri Andropov as its new Party General Secretary. Andropov recognised the need for political and economic changes if the USSR was to remain at all competitive with the USA. He called for a renewed emphasis on discipline and a rooting out of corruption. Dozens of central and local party functionaries were shunted into retirement. Punctuality and conscientiousness at work was demanded. Andropov stated that the leadership had failed to understand conditions in society; by implication he was conceding that a gap had opened between the party and most citizens. Behind the scenes he set up a group of younger politicians including Mikhail Gorbachëv and Nikolai Ryzhkov to explore what kind of reforms were needed in the Soviet economy."

"He also put in train a revision of the country’s foreign policy. Andropov quietly proposed that both the USA and the USSR should formally guarantee not to intervene militarily in the countries under their control. Thus he signalled disapproval of what had happened to Hungary in 1956 and to Czechoslovakia in 1968. Confidential indications were given to Cuba that the USSR was withdrawing its military guarantee for the island’s defence. He called not just for limitations on the superpowers’ stockpiles of nuclear weaponry but for their drastic reduction. Andropov, ex-Chairman of the KGB, understood that he would have a weak bargaining hand unless the USSR could show a sustained capacity to develop its military technology. The Politburo approved. Investment was sanctioned for upgrading the Soviet armed forces. The military-technological parity with the USA won by Brezhnev was to be reattained even at the expense of the popular standard of living. Andropov wanted to ‘perfect’ the communist order; he had hoped for plenty of time to do this. But Reagan’s geopolitical challenge would be met. The Cold War was going to get hotter."

"I have been in the army since I was 17, but I never learned to swear. I think that swearing is good on a collective farm when the bulls do not obey. But with people you can't."

"I cry only for joy. I can see something beautiful and cry. And I'm not ashamed of it. After all, crying from joy is much better than from weakness."

"Russian and foreign historians and politicians said this for me. In their unanimous opinion, the main event of the twentieth century is the Second World War. In it, in the Great Patriotic War, we won. This is the main thing. Although the Americans wrote very different results, for them, the collapse of the Soviet Union was the main event of the past century. There is no more powerful state. The world has become unipolar and it is beneficial for them."

"Russians are used to flaunting their fearlessness, but I'll be honest: no one wants to die. Nevertheless, we rose and shouted: "For the Motherland, for Stalin!" and went on the attack."

"My real friend was my first wife. I could share everything with her without exception. That's how it came together that she became both a wife and a friend. A friend in the full sense of the word happens once in a lifetime or does not happen at all."

"Soviet Marshal Dmitry Yazov was an outstanding commander and a remarkable representative of the iconic generation of victors, a volunteer and a battle-front veteran. He was a man of exceptional courage and determination. He went through the ordeals of the Great Patriotic War with dignity, and after the Victory, he devoted his life to developing the Armed Forces and strengthening Russia’s defence and national security. His loyalty to the Oath and duty as well as his high professionalism and personal qualities earned him undeniable authority and respect."

"After the war, Dmitry Timofeyevich dedicated his entire strength, experience, and knowledge to the development of the Armed Forces and the effort to bolster combat preparedness of the forces and defense capacity of our country. A highly competent and open and principled person who put officer's honor above all else and was highly respected."

"For all of us, he was and will remain a legendary personality, who fought throughout the Great Patriotic War and earned a reputation as a courageous and resolute soldier, as a wise and responsible commander. It was for good reason that he was appointed as the defense minister at a difficult time for the country and fulfilled his duties with dignity, at the same time staying true to his ideals and homeland."

"Using the traditional demagoguery, which has been tried and tested over the years, the putschists blame all our current difficulties on the democrats and promise economic recovery and a better life, security and prosperity for the citizens of the USSR. What a hypocritical lie! Surely Pavlov is responsible for rocketing inflation and unprecedented price rises this year? Surely Yazov as leader of the most corrupt highest placed generals, is responsible for the poverty and lawlessness of our servicemen? Surely Pugo bears personal responsibility for the blood shed in the Baltic republics? Surely Starodubtsev, leader of the organization of Soviet land-owners is to blame, owing to the stance he assumed, for the abortive collection of last year’s bumper crops? And these are the people who promise to “restore order in the country!”"

"The currency reform is being carried out separately, in the interests of the American, British and French monopolies, which are dismembering Germany and trying to weaken her by subordinating her economy to themselves."

"As everyone knows, the Soviet military administration in Germany, acting in line with instructions from the Soviet Government, has always insisted on the preservation of Germany’s political and economic unity. It has always opposed all separatist actions aimed at the dismemberment of Germany. In the bodies of the Control Council, the representatives of the Soviet Union have used every opportunity to seek agreement on the carrying out of a uniform currency reform for the whole of Germany."

"It is now clear that the American, British and French representatives, while formally conducting discussions in the Control Council about an all-German currency reform, used these discussions for the secret preparation of a separate currency reform. Attempts to justify the separate currency reform are being made by reference to the necessity of bringing order into the circulation of currency in the Western German zones of occupation, ruined by National Socialism."

"Huge sums of money have remained in the Western Zones, entirely in the hands of big capitalists and profiteers, money which they had made from war deliveries and speculation. German banking and industrial monopolies have remained in the Western zones and many of them have as good as been transformed into branches of Wall Street, that is branches of American banks and industrial monopolies."

"The separate currency reform does serious damage to the economic recovery of Germany. Instead of a uniform German currency there will be two currencies, instead of uniform prices there will be two standards of prices. Trade relations inside the country will be disrupted. In actual fact, inter-zonal trade is becoming trade between different States, in so far as there are different currencies."

"Seeking to make secure the development of Germany’s peace economy on the basis of the Potsdam decisions and in the interests of the German people, the Soviet military administration in Germany tries to get a currency reform for the whole of Germany. The Soviet military administration condemns the action of the American, British and French occupation authorities in carrying out a separate currency reform, and holds them completely responsible for the consequences of this action."

"For the purpose of protecting the interests of the population of the Soviet zone of occupation of Germany and of the Greater Berlin area and of preventing economic dislocation through the separate actions of the Western Powers, the Soviet military administration in Germany will also adopt other necessary measures arising out of the present situation. The Soviet military administration in Germany feels certain that the German population will support its measures and will take the necessary steps to overcome difficulties, to raise the level of economy and strengthen currency circulation in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany"

"At the London conference official representatives of the United States, Britain and France discussed and decided such questions regarding Germany which come directly within the competence of the Control Council and can be decided only on the basis of agreement among the Four Powers occupying Germany. The American, British and French occupation authorities, however, do not wish to inform the Control Council of the decisions prepared in London nor to give an account of the instructions they received in connection with the unilateral London decisions on the German question."

"A situation has arisen in which only the Soviet side has to give an account to the Control Council whereas the American and British sides refuse to give an account to the Control Council of the actions in the zones of Germany they occupy. Thus, these delegations merely prove that they are tearing up the agreement on the Control Machinery in Germany and are assuming responsibility for breaking up this agreement. By their actions these three delegations once again confirm that the Control Council virtually no longer exists as the supreme body of authority in Germany exercising quadripartite administration of that country. This is also clear from the position taken by the afore-mentioned three delegations at all recent meetings of the Control Council and its agencies."

"This means that these delegations are destroying the Control Council and burying it, are destroying the agreements reached regarding the Allied Control Council in Germany. Undoubtedly this constitutes one of the most serious violations of the obligations undertaken by the British, American and French occupation authorities in Germany by virtue of the Four-Power agreements on the administration of Germany during the occupation period. But it is hence clear that the actions taken now or which will be taken in the future in the Western zones of occupation in Germany in implementation of the unilateral decisions of the London conference cannot be recognized as lawful."

"The engagements in which Zhukov won his reputation were so massive that, inevitably, many outstanding Soviet military men were involved- either under Zhukov's command or in coordinated and associated movements. There was then, and there continued for years to be, a raging competition for military glory in these engagements. Deep lines of political cleavage and quarrels also underlay the military disputes. Not only military glory was involved; political intrigue, intra-Party quarrels, high-level Kremlin politics were at issue. The principal military rivals of Zhukov were his fellow marshals, Ivan S. Konev, Rodion Malinovsky, V. I. Chuikov, A. I. Yeremenko, Semyon Timonshenko, and to a lesser extent men like K. K. Rokossovsky, V. D. Sokolovsky, and the staff chiefs, A. M. Vasilevsky, Boris Shaposhnikov and, later on, S. M. Shtemenko. Rivals of a different category were Stalin's cronies, men like Voroshilov and Budenny, and police generals such as L. Z. Mekhlis and G. I. Kulik."

"{{Translated quote"

"It is up to the state to do it, but there has been nothing but talk and wishful thinking. It's like the tale of the emperor's new clothes. Everyone acted as if the emperor were dressed, until a small boy said he was naked. This is where we stand with reform."

"Chechnya will force the politicians to start serious reform. They can begin by purging the armed forces of windbags and replacing them with a million fighters and half a million support staff."

"To win, you've got to plan carefully and then make war with the speed of lightning."

"Human beings are not trash. Human blood is not water to be spilled."

"I never defended the White House. I defended common sense. They tried to push me, a Russian general, to shoot my own people in the capital of my own state. No such force exists that would compel me to do this. I'm not a policeman. My job is to deal with external enemies. Build up a national guard or whatever you want to deal with domestic problems, but leave the armed forces out of it!"

"No commander can know everything. He must rely on deputies, competent in the narrow areas assigned them. His responsibility is to make sure none of them tugs the blanket to one side of the bed. A deputy who answers 'yes, sir' to every stupid thing his commander says can get his boss into serious trouble. He must have the courage to take a stand and be able to defend it."

"In a normal civilized society, you would have to force the army into politics with a stick. They should not be concerned with who is in power today, be it Czar, General Secretary or President. Presidents come and go, but the motherland always remains. We are not in a normal state."

"I joined the armed forces 25 years ago and still love military service and want to carry on. But these are troubled times, when everything is so confused you can't tell military issues from political ones. So I do not rule out the possibility that I might be forced to it out of necessity. But I don't really want to. If I get carried away in this direction sometimes, it is only out of gloom and desperation, not because I have some overwhelming desire to prove my political mettle."

"Only in the constitutional way. I've had more than my share of war and have come to the conclusion that it doesn't resolve anything. Even the longest wars, lasting a hundred years, still end in peace talks. So why not talk right away and cut out the military fighting stage? There can't be a victor in the kinds of war they are waging now in the former Soviet Union, only throngs of defeated."

"They charged like a bull at the Chechen fence and got their horns stuck. Now they are going crazy out of their own incompetence."

"We have received reliable information from the ground in Chechnya that people there are planning the physical annihilation of Gen. Aleksandr Lebed. These are people who do not want the negotiating process in Chechnya to proceed. We do not believe that it is necessarily the Chechens who plan this action. It is not the first time there have been threats like this. It will have no effect on the work before us."

"You send in the planes to drop the bombs. Then you gather the journalists and tell them to applaud. We need to study that."

"If they want to expand, let them waste the money. Let us be realistic. Who is Russia going to fight now? We are a poor country. We have nothing left to fight with."

"I am ready to lead any regiment into any battle. Just as long as it is a regiment drawn only of children and grandchildren of the people who run our country."

""We are still a great power. We have rockets. They are rusty, but we still have them. It won't make anyone's life easier if a missile is launched, even if it's a rusty one."

"Let us have troops that would scare any aggressor off. These troops should be backed by the nuclear shield."

"If Russia and NATO cooperate, who are they going to be against? There used to be two systems, two military blocs. One system collapsed. Its military bloc collapsed. And the other part remains in perfect operating order. That beautiful NATO bloc was first aimed at the Soviet Union, and it would be a pity to abandon it. So, now it is re-aimed at Russia."

"Russia must be loved, not because you want to. Russia is like gangrene on the leg. If you don't take measures against it, it will infect the whole leg."

"We are standing on one-sixth of the world, a rich country, with our pants down and hoping someone will help us."

"Power must be strong. Patriot will never be a dirty word, whereas democrat has already become one."

"The population of the colonies means nothing but beasts of burden to the gentlemen imperialists. ... The imperialists of all countries treat the peoples who are the objects of their imperialist exploitation as slaves. Naturally the slaves rebel against their tormentors and naturally the strivings of these peoples for freedom and independence become stronger the more often they have the opportunity to conduct a war of defense against their oppressors. The socialists must recognize these wars of the colonial peoples against their European imperialist rulers as just wars of defense."

"Take a walk through the streets and market places of Petrograd and you can really see that every stone is a piece of Russian revolutionary history."

"The governmental machine of the bourgeoisie, consequently also the bourgeois parliaments, are to be broken, disrupted, destroyed, and upon their ruins is to be organized a new power, the power of the union of the working class, the workers' 'parliaments,' i.e., the Soviets. Only the betrayers of the workers can deceive the workers with the hope of a 'peaceful' social revolution, along the lines of parliamentary reforms. Such persons are the worst enemies of the working class, and a most pitiless struggle must be waged against them; no compromise with them is permissible. Therefore, our slogan for any bourgeois country you may choose is: 'Down with Parliament! Long live Soviet power!'"

"Since we are no prophets, none of us can say exactly how many months or years will pass before the victory of the proletarian revolution in the first of those important countries which really determine the fate of the World Revolution. One thing, however, we know exactly, and the new analysis of Europe’s economic situation at the Third Congress has again completely convinced us of it: The revolution is not over. We are not very far distant from the period in which new conflicts will begin, which will shake Europe and the whole world in a much greater degree than the sum total of all previous struggles."

"There is no greater honor than membership in the Communist Party. There is nothing more precious, there can be nothing more precious to us than our party, the splendid organization that has already helped the workers so materially in their hard fight for complete emancipation and that stands ready to help them until the fight is carried to a successful conclusion."

"We were indeed splitters at the beginning of the work of the Communist International. We could not have done otherwise. We were obliged to split the old socialist parties, to save the best revolutionary elements of the working class and to form a rallying point tor the new Communist Party in every country. For a time, we had to come out as splitters, but not one of us regrets it. ... But now, after the passing of two to three years, when we have firmly established our parties everywhere, we must go to the masses and work in such a manner that the simplest worker will understand us. The split for us was no end, but a means to win over the masses, and in my opinion is already half achieved. The masses begin to show a new attitude. They are now forced to see that the split was no selfish aim on our part, and that we are those who call and work for the unity of the revolutionary masses on one platform."

"The articulation of universalism with the sense of Jewish identity took varying forms depending on the different revolutionary currents: for internationalists such as Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Karl Radek and Rosa Luxemburg, the assimilation of a Jewish revolutionary into the concrete universal party, the dissolution of the 'little difference' into the status of equality of the militant, anticipated the society for which they fought; they did not consider the little difference' as called on to crystallize one day in terms of national identity. Were they blind? Blinkered, certainly, in the sense that they underestimated the national dimension of the Jewish problem in Eastern Europe."

"An atmosphere of extreme tension reigned during this period; it was necessary to act without mercy. I think that it was justified. If Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Rykov and Zinoviev had started up their opposition in wartime, there would have been an extremely difficult struggle; the number of victims would have been colossal. Colossal. The two sides would have been condemned to disaster. They had links that went right up to Hitler. That far. Trotsky had similar links, without doubt. Hitler was an adventurist, as was Trotsky, they had traits in common. And the rightists, Bukharin and Rykov, had links with them. And, of course, many of the military leaders."

"No ideal can spring from a soil or seed alien to it; the methods and weapons used for its attainment must be in harmony with itself. Therefore from the struggling proletariat we must not expect the splendour of the harvest and the perfection of form and unfettered grace of victorious strength. These will reveal themselves in the future. Nevertheless, we have every reason to expect that proletarian culture, because of its struggle, its toil, and suffering, will possess characteristics which would probably be unthinkable in the social order of a triumphant Socialism."

"In essence, the Intelligentsia is, as a whole, petite bourgeois. But at the same time, it is the bearer of special functions in society--it is the organ and servitor of social knowledge and consciousness. For, in the words of Lassalle, the union of science and the fourth estate is a most natural phenomenon. A real artist must be sensitive to truth, to the beauty of heroism and of the will to freedom. The teacher, the true teacher, must first of all be with the masses in all their experiences and through all their wanderings."

"Lenin was transformed. I was deeply impressed by that concentrated energy with which he spoke, by those piercing eyes of his which grew almost sombre as they bored gimlet-like into the audience, by the orator’s monotonous but compelling movements, by that fluent diction so redolent of will-power. I realized that as a tribune this man was destined to make a powerful and ineradicable mark. And I already knew the extent of Lenin’s strength as a publicist – his unpolished but extraordinarily clear style, his ability to present any idea, however complicated, in astonishingly simple form and to modify it in such a way that it would ultimately be engraved upon any mind, however dull and however unaccustomed to political thinking. Only later, much later, did I come to see that Lenin’s greatest gifts were not those of a tribune or a publicist, not even those of a thinker, but even in those early days it was obvious to me that the dominating trait of his character, the feature which constituted half his make-up, was his will: an extremely firm, extremely forceful will capable of concentrating itself on the most immediate task but which yet never strayed beyond the radius traced out by his powerful intellect and which assigned every individual problem its place as a link in a huge, world-wide political chain."

"Trotsky's most obvious gifts were his talents as an orator and as a writer. I regard Trotsky as probably the greatest orator of our age. ... His impressive appearance, his handsome, sweeping gestures, the powerful rhythm of his speech, his loud but never fatiguing voice, the remarkable coherence and literary skill of his phrasing, the richness of imagery, scalding irony, his soaring pathos, his rigid logic, clear as polished steel: those are Trotsky’s virtues as a speaker."

"Zinoviev has always acted as Lenin’s faithful henchman and has followed him everywhere. The Mensheviks have affected a slightly scornful attitude to Zinoviev for being just such a dedicated henchman. Perhaps we Forwardists were also slightly infected by this attitude. We knew that Zinoviev was an excellent Party worker, but we knew little of him as a political thinker and we too often used to say of him that he followed Lenin as the thread follows a needle."

"The man was like a diamond, chosen for its absolute hardness to be the axis of some delicate, perpetually revolving piece of mechanism. The man was like ice; the man was like a diamond. His moral nature, too, had a similar quality that was crystalline, cold and spiky. He was transparently free of personal ambition or any form of personal calculation to such a degree that he was somehow faceless. Nor had he any ideas. He had orthodox ideas about everything, but he was only a reflection of the general will, of general Party directives. He never originated anything but merely transmitted what he received from the Central Committee, sometimes from Lenin personally. He transmitted them, of course, clearly and well, adapting them to each concrete situation. When he spoke in public his speeches always bore an official stamp, like leading articles in an official gazette. Everything was carefully thought out; he said what was needed and no more. No sentimentality. No intellectual fireworks."

"telling you absolutely frankly neither the president nor the prime minister knew about this operation About the dispersal of Euromaidan in Kyiv."