Soviet premiers

"They say that the Soviet delegates smile. That smile is genuine. It is not artificial. We wish to live in peace, tranquility. But if anyone believes that our smiles involve abandonment of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin he deceives himself poorly. Those who wait for that must wait until a shrimp learns to whistle."

"Yes, today we have genuine Russian weather. Yesterday we had Swedish weather. I can't understand why your weather is so terrible. Maybe it is because you are immediate neighbours of NATO."

"Finding a reason for an armed conflict now would be very easy, but finding a way to put an end to such a conflict would be very hard."

"Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will dig you in. (.)"

"When it is a question of fighting against imperialism we can state with conviction that we are all Stalinists. We can take pride that we have taken part in the fight for the advance of our great cause against our enemies. From that point of view I am proud that we are Stalinists."

"I am very glad to hear this, since I come from the Ukraine. From now on I can sleep peacefully. I will immediately telegraph my daughter in Kiev."

"If Adenauer were here with us in the sauna, we could see for ourselves that Germany is and will remain divided but also that Germany never will rise again."

"A man emaciated by a grave illness is at first treated by doctors gradually. Food is administered to him in small doses. If more is administered to the patient, it might kill him. And so we want to begin disarmament not with a full dose, although we are prepared even for a full dose. I have said already that the Western powers greatly distrust us. We, too, do not trust them in everything. And so, in order not to destroy a thing which is of great and vital importance to mankind, disarmament, we suggest to begin not with a cardinal but with a gradual solution to disarmament problems."

"The thought sometimes -- the unpleasant thought sometimes creeps up on me here as to whether perhaps Khrushchev was not invited here to enable you to sort of rub him in your sauce and to show the might and the strength of the United States so as to make him sort of … so as to make him shaky at the knees. If that is so, then if I came -- if it took me about 12 hours to get here, I guess it'll just -- it'll take no more than about 10½ hours to fly back."

"I happened to read recently a remark by the American nuclear physicist W. Davidson, who noted that the explosion of one hydrogen bomb releases a greater amount of energy than all the explosions set off by all countries in all wars known in the entire history of mankind. And he, apparently, is right."

"We have come to this town where lives the cream of American art.… But just now I was told that I could not go to Disneyland. I asked "Why not? What is it? Do you have rocket-launching pads there?" I do not know. Just listen to what reason I was told: "We," which means the American authorities, "cannot guarantee your security if you go there." What is it? Is there an epidemic of cholera there or something? Or have gangsters taken over the place that can destroy me? Then what must I do? Commit suicide? … For me, this situation is inconceivable. I cannot find words to explain this to my people."

"Mr. President, call the toady of American imperialism to order."

"I see, Mr. President, that you too are not devoid of a sense of anxiety for the fate of the world understanding, and of what war entails. What would a war give you? You are threatening us with war. But you well know that the very least which you would receive in reply would be that you would experience the same consequences as those which you sent us. And that must be clear to us, people invested with authority, trust, and responsibility. We must not succumb to intoxication and petty passions, regardless of whether elections are impending in this or that country, or not impending. These are all transient things, but if indeed war should break out, then it would not be in our power to stop it, for such is the logic of war. I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction. … If people do not show wisdom, then in the final analysis they will come to a clash, like blind moles, and then reciprocal extermination will begin."

"We and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter that knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it, and then it will be necessary to cut that knot, and what that would mean is not for me to explain to you, because you yourself understand perfectly of what terrible forces our countries dispose. Consequently, if there is no intention to tighten that knot and thereby to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this."

"Don't you know how to paint? My grandson will paint it better! What is this? Are you men or damned pederasts? How can you paint like that? Do you have a conscience?"

"Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river."

"Berlin is the testicle of the West. When I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin."

"If you start throwing hedgehogs under me, I shall throw a couple of porcupines under you."

"I remember President Kennedy once stated... that the United States had the nuclear missile capacity to wipe out the Soviet Union two times over, while the Soviet Union had enough atomic weapons to wipe out the United States only once... When journalists asked me to comment... I said jokingly, "Yes, I know what Kennedy claims, and he's quite right. But I'm not complaining... We're satisfied to be able to finish off the United States first time round. Once is quite enough. What good does it do to annihilate a country twice? We're not a bloodthirsty people.""

"My arms are up to the elbows in blood. That is the most terrible thing that lies in my soul."

"Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual decisively, once and for all."

"Concerning Stalin's merits, an entirely sufficient number of books, pamphlets and studies had already been written in his lifetime. The role of Stalin in the preparation and execution of the socialist revolution, in the Civil War, and in the fight for the construction of socialism in our country, is universally known."

"When we analyze the practice of Stalin in regard to the direction of the party and the country, when we pause to consider everything which Stalin perpetrated, we must be convinced that Lenin's fear were justified. The negative characteristics of Stalin, which, in Lenin's time, were only incipient, transformed themselves during the last years into a grave abuse of power by Stalin, which caused untold harm."

"Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed this concept or tried to prove his viewpoint and the correctness of his position was doomed to removal from the leading collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation."

"We must affirm that the part had fought a serious fight against the Trotskyistes, rightists and bourgeois nationalists, and that it disarmed ideologically all the enemies of Leninism. This ideological fight was carried on successfully, as a result of which the party became strengthened and tempered. Here Stalin played a positive role."

"Stalin originated the concept of 'enemy of the people'. This term automatically rendered it unnecessary that the ideological errors of a man or men engaged in a controversy be proven; this term made possible the usage of the most cruel repression, violating all norms of revolutionary legality, against anyone who in any way disagreed with Stalin, against those who were only suspected of hostile intent, against those who had bad reputations. This concept 'enemy of the people' actually eliminated the possibility of any kind of ideological fight or the making of one's views known on this or that issue, even those of a practical character. In the main, and in actuality, the only proof of guilt used, against all norms of current legal science, was the 'confession' of the accused himself."

"When the fascist armies had actually invaded Soviet territory and military operations began, Moscow issued the order that the German fire was not to be returned. Why? It was because Stalin, despite evident facts, thought that the war had not yet started, that this was only a provocative action on the part of several undisciplined sections of the German Army, and that reaction might serve as a reason for the Germans to begin the war."

"We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within."

"The living will envy the dead."

"We cannot expect the Americans to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can aid their elected leaders in giving them small doses of socialism until suddenly they awake to find they have communism."

"Khrushchev was overthrown in October 1964 by a politburo disgruntled by his brinkmanship over Suez, Berlin, and Cuba and also opposed to his erratic search for coexistence with the United States. During his nine-year rule, Khrushchev had attempted to achieve the impossible: while striving to dismantle the repressive elements of Stalinism, he had used Stalinist measures to crush popular revolutions in Eastern Europe; while seeking to unify global communism, he had created a powerful rival in Mao’s China; while seeking to revive Marxist-Leninist revolutionary impulses in the Third World, he had not only raised Washington’s hackles but also embraced nationalist leaders who imprisoned their left-wing opposition; and while seeking détente with the United States and the end of NATO, his inflammatory language and nuclear threats had underscored the need for a united West. Despite their differences in age and temperament, Kennedy and Khrushchev were both hardened Cold Warriors who only dimly recognized the radical changes in the world landscape that were beginning to reduce the Superpowers’ control. Their successors, less experienced in diplomacy and more intent on domestic reforms, would create a dangerous pause in the Superpowers’ post-Berlin, post- Cuba search for détente."

"Political conditions on the other side had also changed significantly as a result of the Sino-Soviet rupture. In the late 1950s, Mao, resentful of Moscow's refusal to support China's atomic weapons program, condemned Krushchev's abandonment of the doctrine of revolutionary warfare and his pursuit of peaceful coexistence. Krushchev, a critic of Mao's disastrous Great Leap Forward and belligerence toward his neighbors, in 1960 suddenly withdrew Soviet experts and reduced Soviet assistance to China. After the split became public at the Twenty-Second Party Congress in October 1961, Mao openly mocked Krushchev's retreat during the Cuban missile crisis, complained of Moscow's pro-New Delhi stance during the 1962 Sino-Indian border conflict, and denounced the test ban treaty as a means of preventing China from developing its own nuclear weapons. By the end of 1963 the two communist giants were openly competing for leadership of the revolutionary movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America."

"Our only "crime" is that in Bucharest we did not agree that a fraternal communist party like the Chinese Communist Party should be unjustly condemned; our only "crime" is that we had the courage to oppose openly, at an international communist meeting (and not in the marketplace) the unjust action of Comrade Khrushchev, our only "crime" is that we are a small Party of a small and poor country which, according to Comrade Khrushchev, should merely applaud and approve but express no opinion of its own. But this is neither Marxist nor acceptable. Marxism-Leninism has granted us the right to have our say and we will not give up this right for any one, neither on account of political and economic pressure nor on account of the threats and epithets that they might hurl at us. On this occasion we would like to ask Comrade Khrushchev why he did not make such a statement to us instead of to a representative of a third party. Or does Comrade Khrushchev think that the Party of Labor of Albania has no views of its own but has made common cause with the Communist Party of China in an unprincipled manner, and therefore, on matters pertaining to our Party, one can talk with the Chinese comrades? No, Comrade Khrushchev, you continue to blunder and hold very wrong opinions about our Party. The Party of Labor of Albania has its own views and will answer for them both to its own people as well as to the international communist and workers' movement."

"It is not we who behave like the Yugoslavs but you, comrade Khrushchev, who are using methods alien to Marxism-Leninism against our Party. You consider Albania as a market commodity which can be gained by one or lost by another. There was a time when Albania was considered a medium of exchange, when others thought it depended on them whether Albania should or should not exist, but that time came to an end with the triumph of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism in our country. You were repeating the same thing when you decided that you had "lost" Albania or that some one else had "won" it, when you decided that Albania is no longer a socialist country, as it turns out from the letter you handed to us on November 8, in which our country is not mentioned as a socialist country."

"Nikita Khruschev was a difficult man to deal with, often very hard, always determined. But his peasant side which made him alternatively good-natured and cunning, also made him likeable."

"Comrade Khrushchev often repeats that Socialism cannot be built with American wheat. I think it can be done by anyone who knows how to do it, while a person who doesn't know how to do it cannot build Socialism even with his own wheat. Khrushchev says we live on charity received from the imperialist countries … What moral right have those who attack us to rebuke us about American aid or credits when Khruschev himself has just tried to conclude an economic agreement with America?"

"He's a charming fellow between sentences."

"The peoples of all our democracies are hungry for peace and security. For 20 years some of us have lived either at war or under the shadow of war. They yearn for some alleviation of the exertions and sacrifices that have been demanded of them. They hear the argument put forward that the development of nuclear weapons has rendered conventional forces obsolete and unnecessary, and that it is a waste of money and effort to continue to maintain them. They are asked by some to believe that the hydrogen bomb has rendered war impossible because it is so deadly that both sides would be annihilated. There is therefore a danger that the free peoples may be lulled into a sense of false security, and that they will succumb to the temptation to relax their efforts which are still essential, if peace is to be preserved, and if our freedom and way of life are to be safeguarded. We must therefore be very careful not to be misled by specious and wholly untenable arguments, or read more into the smiles of the Kremlin than the facts of the case warrant. After all, even Mr. Krushev has himself warned us against wishful thinking. Here is what he said at a Kremlin banquet as recently as a fortnight ago: "The West say that the Soviet leaders smile, but that their actions do not match their smiles. But I assure them that the smiles are sincere. They are not artificial. We wish to live in peace. But if anyone thinks that our smiles mean that we abandon the teachings of Marx and Lenin" (i.e. that the ultimate purpose of Soviet policy is world revolution),"or abandon our Communist road, then they are fooling themselves". In the circumstances I submit that our course is plain. If we are to achieve a lasting relaxation of tension between East and West, and with it practical measures for peace, we can only do so by maintaining our unity and continuing to build up our collective strength."

"And lastly, Chairman Khrushchev has compared the United States to a worn-out runner living on its past performance, and stated that the Soviet Union would out-produce the United States by 1970. Without wishing to trade hyperbole with the Chairman, I do suggest that he reminds me of the tiger hunter who has picked a place on the wall to hang the tiger's skin long before he his caught the tiger. This tiger has other ideas."

"In Thompson's mind was this thought: Khrushchev's gotten himself in a hell of a fix. He would then think to himself, "My God, if I can get out of this with a deal that I can say to the Russian people: 'Kennedy was going to destroy Castro and I prevented it.'" Thompson, knowing Khrushchev as he did, thought Khrushchev will accept that. And Thompson was right."

"Khrushchev relaxed somewhat the dead dictator’s regime without changing its basic institutions or laws: one-party rule remained in place, as did the ubiquitous secret police and censorship. Nevertheless, life for Soviet citizens eased considerably. Millions of concentration-camp inmates regained their freedom. Many victims of repression were rehabilitated, which did not benefit them but brought relief to their families. Limited contacts with foreign nationals were permitted once again. More visitors from abroad received entry visas, and more Soviet citizens could travel outside the USSR. The jamming of foreign short-wave broadcasts continued as before, but it was not foolproof, so that the Soviet public could obtain a more realistic picture of life abroad as well as at home. The effect was to open people’s eyes."

"Nikita Krushchev's eagerness to challenge U.S. interests around the world contributed to the spread of the Cold War in the Middle East, East Asia, Latin America, and even Africa. Krushchev's aggressiveness was motivated not only by a desire to take advantage of an opportunity to expand Soviet influence but also by the perceived Soviet need to fend off a growing challenge by China for leadership of the communist movement. Krushchev's willingness to engage the United States in a nuclear arms race was motivated primarily by his realization that the Soviet Union, despite the continuing development of its nuclear arsenal, was still vulnerable to an American nuclear strike. He undoubtedly believed that the best defense is a good offense and that a forward policy would conceal Soviet nuclear weakness while serving to pressure the West to resolve issues, such as Berlin, to the satisfaction of the Soviet Union. Krushchev's aggressiveness also made Soviet-American reconciliation impossible during the 1950s."

"Krushchev's public rhetoric also made Soviet-American reconciliation difficult, if not impossible, early in Kennedy's presidency. On January 6, 1961, the Soviet leader declared his country would support "wars of national liberation" in the underdeveloped world. Krushchev's declaration, wrote the president's confidante and historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., "alarmed Kennedy more than Moscow's amiable signals assuaged him." Although Kennedy was willing to negotiate an end to the Cold War, the Third World challenge which Krushchev threw at him would have to be dealt with first."

"In the opinion of another historian, Bruce Miroff, Kennedy's reaction to Krushchev's blustering revealed an acute inferiority complex, which the president manifested by a perverse need to prove his leadership capabilities. As a result, rather than ignoring or minimizing Krushchev's threats, as Eisenhower usually did, Kennedy personalized them and converted them into tests of will, in the process manufacturing crises that need not have been. "There was really nothing in that Eisenhower] era comparable to the Berlin crisis of 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962," Miroff observes, both of which represented the closest approaches to a superpower nuclear war during the Cold War. For whatever reasons, whether they were primarily ideological, political, or psychological- and all were important- in formulating his initial response to the Soviet Union Kennedy chose to emphasize Krushchev's bellicose actions rather than his friendly gestures. Only after Kennedy had proved to the Soviet leader that he was not soft on communism would diplomacy make any headway during his presidency."

"Partly to offset America's nuclear superiority, but primarily to deter another U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba, Krushchev decided in early 1962 to deploy on that island nation thirty-six medium-range ballistic missiles (with a range of 2,200 nautical miles). Since the United States had deployed Jupiter IRBMs in Turkey, the Soviet leader had no qualms about trying to do the same thing in Cuba. "It was high time," he recalled thinking in his own memoir, "America learned what it feels like to have her own land and her own people threatened.""

"It is probable that Krushchev also wanted a dramatic way of achieving a breakthrough on the Berlin problem, and perhaps expected that the successful deployment of missiles in Cuba would do much to neutralize U.S. nuclear superiority, thereby enabling him to increase Soviet pressure on that beleaguered city. In addition, some analysts believe, the successful deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba would distract attention from Krushchev's growing domestic problems, primarily the mediocre performance of Soviet agriculture, and solidify the leadership of the Soviet Union in the international communist movement, which was being increasingly challenged by the Chinese."

"Ironically, the enhanced short-term prestige that Kennedy experienced in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis only produced greater long-term insecurity for his country. The humiliation Krushchev suffered at the hands of Kennedy during the 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."

"Let’s set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace—and you can have it in the next second—surrender. Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face—that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand—the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for “peace at any price” or “better Red than dead,” or as one commentator put it, he would rather “live on his knees than die on his feet.” And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don’t speak for the rest of us."

"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."

"in January 1961, she (Carol Ruth Silver) saw Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev bang his shoe on the table during his famous address declaring the Soviet Union's support for national liberation struggles in Cuba and Vietnam. Witnessing Khrushchev's historic challenge to U.S. hegemony in international affairs broadened Silver's thinking."

"Even so, the new leadership, among whom Nikita Khrushchev slowly emerged as the head, went ahead with gradually setting free many of those imprisoned in the GULag. While labor camps would continue to exist right up to the end of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev removed them as a key part of the country’s economy, which under Stalin had been completely dependent on prison labor. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners—political protesters, petty thieves, foreign soldiers, those who belonged to the “wrong” nationality, and those many who had no idea why they had been arrested—started to emerge from the camps, and struggled to get home or find a new place in society. These are the people the Russian Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn immortalized in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and the process Ilya Ehrenburg called “The Thaw.” But Khrushchev himself later admitted that the new leaders “were scared—really scared. We were afraid that the thaw might unleash a flood, which we wouldn’t be able to control and which would drown us.”"

"The new Soviet leaders understood that some of Stalin’s policies had created the resistance that had boiled to the surface after his death, not just in East Germany but elsewhere as well. But they were also afraid that the East German rebellion could be repeated elsewhere if they were not careful. By late 1953 they had therefore developed what they called a “new course,” which was intent on reform without weakening the Communists’ monopoly on power. The main parts of the reform program were reducing the number of people who were arrested or otherwise excluded from society, amnesty for most political prisoners, cuts in heavy industry and defense industry output, and improvements in the production of food and consumer products."

"If you are afraid of wolves, keep out of the woods."

"Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in 10 or 20 years time? No one. Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one."

"Fascism is the bourgeoisie’s fighting organisation that relies on the active support of Social-Democracy. Social-Democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism."

"From the point of view of the onlooker, the question of the existence of a Georgian newspaper in general, and the question of its content and trend in particular, may seem to settle themselves naturally and simply: the Georgian Social-Democratic movement is not a separate, exclusively Georgian, working-class movement with its own separate programme; it goes hand in hand with the entire Russian movement and, consequently, accepts the authority of the Russian Social-Democratic Party—hence it is clear that a Georgian Social-Democratic newspaper should be only a local organ that deals mainly with local questions and reflects the local movement. But behind this reply lurks a difficulty which we cannot ignore and which we shall inevitably encounter. We refer to the language difficulty. While the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Party is able to explain all general questions with the aid of the all-Party newspaper and leave it to the regional committees to deal only with local questions, the Georgian newspaper finds itself in a difficulty as regards content. The Georgian newspaper must simultaneously play the part of an all-Party and of a regional, or local organ. As the majority of Georgian working-class readers cannot freely read the Russian newspaper, the editors of the Georgian newspaper have no right to pass over those questions which the all-Party Russian newspaper is discussing, and should discuss. Thus, the Georgian newspaper must inform its readers about all questions of principle concerning theory and tactics. At the same time it must lead the local movement and throw proper light on every event, without leaving a single fact unexplained, and providing answers to all questions that excite the local workers. The Georgian newspaper must link up and unite the Georgian and Russian militant workers The newspaper must inform its readers about everything that interests them at home, in Russia and abroad."

"It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible."

"In my opinion there are two seats of war danger. The first is in the Far East, in the zone of Japan. I have in mind the numerous statements made by Japanese military men containing threats against other powers. The second seat is in the zone of Germany. It is hard to say which is the most menacing, but both exist and are active. Compared with these two principal seats of war danger, the Italian-Abyssinian war is an episode. At present, the Far Eastern seat of danger reveals the greatest activity. However, the centre of this danger may shift to Europe. This is indicated, for example, by the interview which Herr Hitler recently gave to a French newspaper. In this interview Hitler seems to have tried to say peaceful things, but he sprinkled his "peacefulness" so plentifully with threats against both France and the Soviet Union that nothing remained of his "peacefulness." You see, even when Herr Hitler wants to speak of peace he cannot avoid uttering threats. This is symptomatic."

"As we know, the goal of every struggle is victory. But if the proletariat is to achieve victory, all the workers, irrespective of nationality, must be united. Clearly, the demolition of national barriers and close unity between the Russian, Georgian, Armenian, Polish, Jewish and other proletarians is a necessary condition for the victory of the proletariat of all Russia."

"Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.... These organisations (i.e. Fascism and social democracy) are not antipodes, they are twins."

"It is impossible to finish off capitalism without having finished off social democracy in the working-class movement."

"The State is a machine in the hands of the governing class for suppressing the resistance of its class antagonists. In this way the dictatorship of the proletariat differs in no way essentially from the dictatorship of any other class."

"To choose one's victims, to prepare one's plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed... There is nothing sweeter in the world."

"We think that a powerful and vigorous movement is impossible without differences — "true conformity" is possible only in the cemetery."

"If any foreign minister begins to defend to the death a "peace conference," you can be sure his government has already placed its orders for new battleships and aeroplanes."

"A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron."

"The existing pseudo-government which was not elected by the people and which is not accountable to the people must be replaced by a government recognised by the people, elected by representatives of the workers, soldiers and peasants and held accountable to their representatives."

"The press must grow day in and day out — it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon."

"We disagreed with Zinoviev and Kamenev because we knew that the policy of amputation was fraught with great dangers for the Party, that the method of amputation, the method of blood-letting — and they demanded blood — was dangerous, infectious: today you amputate one limb, tomorrow another, the day after tomorrow a third — what will we have left in the Party?"

"Bukharin's a swine and surely worse than a swine because he thinks it below his dignity to write a couple of lines."

"What would happen if capital succeeded in smashing the Republic of Soviets? There would set in an era of the blackest reaction in all the capitalist and colonial countries, the working class and the oppressed peoples would be seized by the throat, the positions of international communism would be lost."

"If the opposition disarms, all is well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves."

"True courage consists in being strong enough to master and overcome oneself and subordinate one’s will to the will of the collective, the will of the higher party body."

"We do not want a single foot of foreign territory; but of our territory we shall not surrender a single inch to anyone."

"We are in favour of the withering away of the state, and at the same time we stand for the strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat, which represents the most powerful and mighty of all forms of the state which have existed up to the present day. The highest development of the power of the state, with the object of preparing the conditions of the withering away of the state: that is the Marxist formula. Is it "contradictory"? Yes, it is "contradictory." But this contradiction is a living thing and wholly reflects the Marxist dialectic."

"National and racial chauvinism is a vestige of the misanthropic customs characteristic of the period of cannibalism. Anti-Semitism, as an extreme form of racial chauvinism, is the most dangerous vestige of cannibalism. Anti-semitism is of advantage to the exploiters as a lightning conductor that deflects the blows aimed by the working people at capitalism. Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the toilers, for it is a false track which diverts them from the proper road and leads them into the jungle. Hence, Communists, as consistent internationalists, cannot but be irreconcilable and bitter enemies of anti-Semitism. In the U.S.S.R., anti-Semitism is strictly prosecuted as a phenomenon hostile to the Soviet system. According to the laws of the U.S.S.R. active anti-Semites are punished with death."

"As is known, the Government of the State in Britain at the present time is in the hands of one party, the Labour Party, and the opposition parties are deprived of the right to participate in the Government of Britain. That Mr. Churchill calls true democracy. Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Hungary are administered by blocs of several parties—from four to six parties—and the opposition, if it is more or less loyal, is secured the right of participation in the Government. That Mr. Churchill describes as totalitarianism, tyranny and police rule. Why? On what grounds? Don't expect a reply from Mr. Churchill. Mr. Churchill does not understand in what a ridiculous position he puts himself by his outcry about “totalitarianism, tyranny and police rule.""

"We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us."

"I know that the gentlemen in the enemy camp may think of me however they like. I consider it beneath me to try to change the minds of these gentlemen."

"We must finally understand that of all the precious capital in the world, the most precious capital, the most decisive capital, is human beings [...]. Cadres decide everything! (A more accurate translation, with respect to the context, might read: "Cadres are the key to everything")"

"Still others think that war should be organised by a "superior race," say, the German "race," against an "inferior race," primarily against the Slavs; that only such a war can provide a way out of the situation, for it is the mission of the "superior race" to render the "inferior race" fruitful and to rule over it. Let us assume that this queer theory, which is as far removed from science as the sky from the earth, let us assume that this queer theory is put into practice. What may be the result of that? It is well known that ancient Rome looked upon the ancestors of the present-day Germans and French in the same way as the representatives of the "superior race" now look upon the Slav races. It is well known that ancient Rome treated them as an "inferior race," as "barbarians," destined to live in eternal subordination to the "superior race," to "great Rome", and, between ourselves be it said, ancient Rome had some grounds for this, which cannot be said of the representatives of the "superior race" of today. (Thunderous applause.) But what was the upshot of this? The upshot was that the non-Romans, i.e., all the "barbarians," united against the common enemy and brought Rome down with a crash. The question arises: What guarantee is there that the claims of the representatives of the "superior race" of today will not lead to the same lamentable results? What guarantee is there that the fascist literary politicians in Berlin will be more fortunate than the old and experienced conquerors in Rome? Would it not be more correct to assume that the opposite will be the case?"

"There is not, nor should there be, an irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective,... There should be no such contrast, because collectivism, Socialism, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the collective. Socialism cannot abstract itself from individual interests. More than that, socialist society alone can firmly safeguard the interests of the individual. In this sense there is no irreconcilable contrast between Individualism and Socialism."

"The Communists base themselves on rich historical experience which teaches that obsolete classes do not voluntarily abandon the stage of history."

"Life has improved, comrades. Life has become more joyous."

"Mankind is divided into rich and poor, into property owners and exploited; and to abstract oneself from this fundamental division, and from the antagonism between poor and rich, means abstracting oneself from fundamental facts."

"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."

"Much more could have been done had we Bolsheviks been cleverer."

"The confidence of the people in the worker-directors of the economy is a great thing, Comrades. The leaders come and go, but the people remain. Only the people are immortal, everything else is ephemeral. That is why it is necessary to appreciate the full value of the confidence of the people."

"History shows that there are no invincible armies and that there never have been."

"You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government's patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning."

"Ours is a just cause; victory will be ours!"

"Is it possible, then, to doubt that we can and must gain victory over the German invaders? The enemy is not as strong as some terror-stricken pseudo-intellectuals picture him. The devil is not as terrible as he is painted."

"Comrades, Red Army and Red Navy men, commanders and political instructors, men and women guerrillas! The whole world is looking to you as a force capable of destroying the brigand hordes of German invaders. The enslaved peoples of Europe under the yoke of the German invaders are looking to you as their liberators. A great mission of liberation has fallen to your lot. Be worthy of this mission! The war you are waging is a war of liberation, a just war."

"Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the German people remain."

"This leads to the conclusion, it is time to finish retreating. Not one step back! Such should now be our main slogan. ... Henceforth the solid law of discipline for each commander, Red Army soldier, and commissar should be the requirement — not a single step back without order from higher command."

"National in form; socialist in context."

"The strength of Soviet patriotism lies in the fact that it is based not on racial or nationalistic prejudices, but on the peoples' profound loyalty and devotion to their Soviet Motherland, on the fraternal partnership of the working people of all the nationalities in our country. Soviet patriotism harmoniously combines the national traditions of the peoples and the common vital interests of all the working people of the Soviet Union. Far from dividing them, Soviet patriotism welds all the nations and peoples of our country into a single fraternal family. This should be regarded as the basis of the inviolable friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union which is growing ever stronger. At the same time the peoples of the U.S.S.R. respect the rights and independence of the peoples of foreign countries and have always shown themselves willing to live in peace and friendship with neighbouring states."

"We cannot forget what Lenin said about our great construction, which in large part depends on our succeeding in delaying the war with the capitalist countries. This war is inevitable, but it can be delayed until the proletarian revolution ripens in Europe, or until the colonial revolutions break out, or, finally, until the capitalists fight among themselves for the division of the colonies."

"The kind of socialism under which everybody would get the same pay, an equal quantity of meat and an equal quantity of bread, would wear the same clothes and receive the same goods in the same quantities—such a socialism is unknown to Marxism. All that Marxism says is that until classes have been finally abolished and until labor has been transformed from a means of subsistence into the prime want of man, into voluntary labor for society, people will be paid for their labor according to the work performed."

"This country is a ritual."

"I don't want to have to say this out loud, but I did what I did, I killed as many as I could lay hands on, and very few escaped."

"We are not the kind of people who, when the word "anarchism" is mentioned, turn away contemptuously and say with a supercilious wave of the hand: "Why waste time on that, it's not worth talking about!" We think that such cheap "criticism" is undignified and useless. Nor are we the kind of people who console themselves with the thought that the Anarchists "have no masses behind them and, therefore, are not so dangerous." It is not who has a larger or smaller "mass" following today, but the essence of the doctrine that matters. If the "doctrine" of the Anarchists expresses the truth, then it goes without saying that it will certainly hew a path for itself and will rally the masses around itself. If, however, it is unsound and built up on a false foundation, it will not last long and will remain suspended in mid-air. But the unsoundness of anarchism must be proved."

"Some people believe that Marxism and anarchism are based on the same principles and that the disagreements between them concern only tactics, so that, in the opinion of these people, no distinction whatsoever can be drawn between these two trends. This is a great mistake. We believe that the Anarchists are real enemies of Marxism. Accordingly, we also hold that a real struggle must be waged against real enemies."

"Marxism is not only the theory of socialism, it is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx's proletarian socialism logically follows. This philosophical system is called dialectical materialism."

"Strikes, boycott, parliamentarism, meetings and demonstrations are all good forms of struggle as means for preparing and organising the proletariat. But not one of these means is capable of abolishing existing inequality. All these means must be concentrated in one principal and decisive means; the proletariat must rise and launch a determined attack upon the bourgeoisie in order to destroy capitalism to its foundations. This principal and decisive means is the socialist revolution."

"Until the bourgeoisie is completely vanquished, until its wealth has been confiscated, the proletariat must without fail possess a military force, it must without fail have its "proletarian guard," with the aid of which it will repel the counter-revolutionary attacks of the dying bourgeoisie, exactly as the Paris proletariat did during the Commune."

"I have no son named Yakov."

"You know, they are fooling us, there is no God."

"God's not unjust, he doesn't actually exist. We've been deceived. If God existed, he'd have made the world more just... I'll lend you a book and you'll see."

"Before your eyes rises the hero of Gogol's story who, in a fit of aberration, imagined that he was the King of Spain. Such is the fate of all megalomaniacs."

"This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity."

"One of Ivan the Terrible's mistakes was to overlook the five great feudal families. If he had annihilated those five families, there would definitely have been no Time of Troubles. But Ivan the Terrible would execute someone and then spend a long time repenting and praying. God got in his way in this matter. He ought to have been still more decisive!"

"The writer is the engineer of the human soul."

"If, against all expectation, Germany finds itself in a difficult situation then she can be sure that the Soviet people will come to Germany's aid and will not allow Germany to be strangled. The Soviet Union wants to see a strong Germany and we will not allow Germany to be thrown to the ground."

"I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how."

"Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs."

"[The Albanians] seem to be rather backward and primitive people... they can be as faithful as a dog; that is one of the traits of the primitive. Our Chuvash were the same. The Russian tsars always used them for their bodyguards."

"The Pope! How many divisions has he got?"

"So the bastard's dead? Too bad we didn't capture him alive!"

"The fight against Zionism has nothing in common with anti-Semitism. Zionism is an enemy of workers around the world, both of those who are Jewish and those who are not."

"Does Djilas, who is himself a writer, not know what human suffering and the human heart are? Can't he understand it if a soldier who has crossed thousands of kilometers through blood and fire and death has fun with a wench or takes some trifle?"

"You Albanians] are a separate people, just like the Persians and the Arabs, who have the same religion as the Turks. Your ancestors existed before the Romans and the Turks. Religion has nothing to do with nationality and statehood... the question of religious beliefs must be kept well in mind, must be handled with great care, because the religious feelings of the people must not be offended. These feelings have been cultivated in the people for many centuries, and great patience is called for on this question, because the stand towards it is important for the compactness and unity of the people."

"The idea of a concentration camp is excellent."

"Tsar Alexander reached Paris."

"I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy."

"God is on your side? Is He a Conservative? The Devil's on my side, he's a good Communist."

"The Jews are not a nation!"

"There are no fortresses that Bolsheviks cannot storm."

"Fuck them!"

"I'm finished. I trust no one, not even myself."

"Why did you beat me so hard?"

"He can't even shoot straight."

"Having consolidated its power, and taking the lead of the peasantry, the proletariat of the victorious country can and must build a socialist society."

"The State is a machine in the hands of the ruling class for suppressing the resistance of its class enemies. in this respect the dictatorship of the proletariat does not differ essentially from dictatorship of any other class, for the proletarian State is a machine for the suppression of the bourgeoisie."

"Leninism is Marxism of the era of imperialism and the proletarian revolution. To be more exact, Leninism is the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution in general, the theory and tactics of the dictatorship of the proletariat in particular. Marx and Engels pursued their activities in the pre-revolutionary period (we have the proletarian revolution in mind), when developed imperialism did not yet exist, in the period of the proletarians' preparation for revolution, in the period when the proletarian revolution was not yet an immediate practical inevitability. But Lenin, the disciple of Marx and Engels, pursued his activities in the period of developed imperialism, in the period of the unfolding proletarian revolution, when the proletarian revolution had already triumphed in one country, had smashed bourgeois democracy and had ushered in the era of proletarian democracy, the era of the Soviets."

"The mortal sin of the Second International was not that it pursued at that time the tactics of utilising parliamentary forms of struggle, but that it overestimated the importance of these forms, that it considered them virtually the only forms; and that when the period of open revolutionary battles set in and the question of extra-parliamentary forms of struggle came to the fore, the parties of the Second International turned their backs on these new tasks, refused to shoulder them."

"The Party must be, first of all, the advanced detachment of the working class. The Party must absorb all the best elements of the working class, their experience, their revolutionary spirit, their selfless devotion to the cause of the proletariat. But in order that it may really be the armed detachment, the Party must be armed with revolutionary theory, with a knowledge of the laws of the movement, with a knowledge of the laws of revolution. Without this it will be incapable of directing the struggle of the proletariat, of leading the proletariat."

"The principle of the minority submitting to the majority, the principle of directing Party work from a centre, not infrequently gives rise to attacks on the part of wavering elements, to accusations of "bureaucracy," "formalism," etc. It scarcely needs proof that systematic work by the Party as one whole, and the directing of the struggle of the working class, would be impossible without putting these principles into effect. Leninism in questions of organisation is the unswerving application of these applications of these principles."

"The Party is the highest form of organisation of the proletariat. The Party is the principle guiding force within the class of the proletarians and among the organisations of that class. But it does not by any means follow from this that the Party can be regarded as an end in itself, as a self-sufficient force. The Party is not only the highest form of class association of the proletarians; it is at the same time an instrument in the hands of the proletariat for achieving the dictatorship, when that has not yet been achieved and for consolidating and expanding the dictatorship when it has already been achieved. The Party could not have risen so high in importance and could not have exerted its influence over all other forms of organisations of the proletariat, if the latter had not been confronted with the question of power, if the conditions of imperialism, the inevitability of wars, and the existence of a crisis had not yet demanded the concentration of all the forces of the proletariat at one point, the gathering of all the threads of the revolutionary movement in one spot in order to overthrow the bourgeoisie and to achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat. The proletariat needs the Party first of all as its General Staff, which it must have for the successful seizure of power. It scarcely needs proof that without a party capable of rallying around itself the mass organisations of the proletariat, and of centralising the leadership of the entire movement during the progress of the struggle , the proletariat in Russia could not have established its revolutionary dictatorship."

"The achievement and maintenance of the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible without a party which is strong by reason of its solidarity and iron discipline. But iron discipline in the Party is inconceivable without unity of will, without complete and absolute unity of action on the part of all members of the Party. This does not mean, of course, that the possibility of conflicts of opinion within the Party is thereby precluded. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and conflict of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that discipline must be "blind." On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline. But after a conflict of opinion has been closed, after criticism has been exhausted and a decision has been arrived at, unity of will and unity of action of all Party members are the necessary conditions without which neither Party unity nor iron discipline in the Party is conceivable."

"The theory of "defeating" opportunist elements by the ideological struggle within the Party, the theory of "overcoming" these elements within the confines of a single party, is a rotten and dangerous theory, which threatens to condemn the Party to paralysis and chronic infirmity, threatens to leave the Party a prey to opportunism, threatens to leave the proletariat without a revolutionary party, threatens to deprive the proletariat of its main weapon in the fight against imperialism. Our Party could not have emerged on to the broad highway, it could not have seized power and organised the dictatorship of the proletariat, it could not have emerged victorious from the civil war, if it had had within its ranks people like Martov and Dan, Potresov and Axelrod. Our Party succeeded in achieving internal unity and unexampled cohesion of its ranks primarily because it was able to in good time to purge itself of the opportunist pollution, because it was able to rid its ranks of the Liquidators and Mensheviks. Proletarian parties develop and become strong by purging themselves of opportunists and reformists, social-imperialists and social-chauvinists, social-patriots and social-pacifists."

"For some people, four walls are three too many."

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic."

"You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."

"Death solves all problems — no man, no problem."

"We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us."

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?"

"Quantity has a quality all its own."

"Stalin was an example of creativity, humanism and an edifying example of peace and heroism! [...] Everything that he did, he did at the service of the people. Our father Stalin is dead, but when remembering his example, our affection towards him will make our arms grow strong for the building of a great tomorrow, to assure a future in memory of his magnificent example."

"When my mother left us, [Stalin] was left completely alone. And I think what came next, in the late 30s and after the war in the 40s - I think that was a result of his complete loneliness on top of the world. Nobody would argue with him any more."

"Comrade Stalin showed us how to build socialism in a backward country: it's painful to begin with, but afterwards everything turns out just fine."

"During that meeting, King told us, when they were talking about what was going to happen to the Germans after the war, Stalin had said out of a clear sky: "I know 60,000 German officers I am going to shoot!" Thereupon Churchill arose, cigar in hand, and paced back and forth across the room saying such a thing could not be; it was not Christian; we were civilized people; it was against the laws of civilized warfare to shoot 60,000 officers! Back and forth walked Churchill, while Stalin sat at the table, not saying a word. Finally, Churchill returned to his place, and after everything had quieted down, Stalin once more, through his interpreter, said, "I know 60,000 German officers I am going to shoot after the war is over!" Apparently Stalin understood some English, although he would not admit it. Whether he could speak English I did not know, nor was I ever able to find out."

"The following afternoon we had a conference with the President, and from 4:00 until 7:00 met with all the "Big Three." Seated around the table, in order, were: The Prime Minister, next to him Anthony Eden, then Sir John Dill, Air Chief Marshal Portal, then the Russian Voroshilov, then Stalin, then Molotov, then myself, then Admiral King, General Marshall, the President, then an interpreter, Admiral Leahy, Admiral Cunningham, then Sir Alan Brooke, and another interpreter. Not having met Stalin the day before, I turned to Mr. Molotov and said, "I should like to meet Marshal Stalin." There was considerable discussion- several long minutes. I don't know whether, in my expression, I had used the wrong words, or whether in being interpreted it had acquired another meaning. Perhaps, translated, it meant I was challenging Stalin to a duel. Anyway, I saw I wasn't getting anywhere, so I turned to Molotov and said, "Listen! All I want to do is to say, 'How do you do' to Marshal Stalin, to meet him, that's all." Apparently, Molotov and the interpreter understood, because they then introduced me to Stalin, and everything was O.K."

"His history is a series of victories over a series of tremendous difficulties. Since 1917, not a single year of his career has passed without his having done something which would have made any other man famous. He is a man of iron. The name by which he is known describes it: the word Stalin means "steel" in Russian. He is as strong and yet as flexible as steel. His power lies in his formidable intelligence, the breadth of his knowledge, the amazing orderliness of his mind, his passion for precision, his inexorable spirit of progress, the rapidity, sureness and intensity of his decisions, and his constant care to choose the right men."

"The dead do not survive except upon earth. Wherever there are revolutionaries, there is Lenin. But one may also say that it is in Stalin more than anyone else that the thoughts and words of Lenin are to be found. He is the Lenin of today."

"People at the top do not want to share their power. They've always got some marvellous reason: I'm following my religion; I'm following the laws of economics. Even Stalin: I'm representing the vanguard of the working class, so please don't cause trouble. That is the battle that every generation has, and yet we mustn't be pessimistic about it..."

"The present viewpoint is that Stalin proved to be the most resolute leader, that the Soviet Union exerted undue influence in reshaping the map of postwar Europe, and that a war purportedly begun to defend the independence of small European nations ended up by sacrificing them. The question — did Stalin outwit and outjostle Roosevelt and Churchill — will remain one of the enigmas of the 20th century."

"Stalin...[has] compelled us to pass the judgement we had hitherto refused to register. His Russia is a totalitarian state, like another, as brutal towards the rights of others, as careless of its plighted word. If this man ever understood the international creed of socialism, he long ago forgot it. In this land the absolute power has wrought its customary effects of corruption."

"'Stalin is a Genghis Khan, an unscrupulous intriguer, who sacrifices everything else to the preservation of power ... He changes his theories according to whom he needs to get rid of next.'"

"Stalin hailed as triumphs, and converted into a system, compromises, concessions and abuses which Lenin, if he had been driven to accept them, would have treated as harsh and temporary sacrifices."

"I believe Stalin made big mistakes but also showed great wisdom. In my opinion, blaming Stalin for everything that occurred in the Soviet Union would be historical simplism, because no man by himself could have created certain conditions. It would be the same as giving Stalin all the credit for what the USSR once was. That is impossible! I believe that the efforts of millions and millions of heroic people contributed to the USSR's development and to its relevant role in the world in favor of hundreds of millions of people."

"The details supplied by Khrushchev on Stalin's methods ... lead us to believe in the existence in these countries of a veritable state capitalism, exploiting the working class in a manner not very different from the way the working class is used in capitalist countries."

"Churchill said as early as 1918 that Soviet power should be strangled in its infancy. But at our intimate dinners with Roosevelt in Teheran and Yalta, [Churchill] said, "I get up in the morning and pray that Stalin is alive and well. Only Stalin can save the peace!" He was confident that Stalin would play that exceptional role which he had assumed in the war. His cheeks were wet with tears. Either he was a great actor or he spoke sincerely."

"[Stalin's] purge caused me to examine the meaning of Communism.... I had always known of course that there were books critical of Communism.... I had never read them because I knew that the party did not want me to read them..... the first book I read... was called I Speak for the Silent [by] Professor Vladimir Tchernavin.... He was a little man in the Communist world, gentle, humane, good.... Suddenly for no reason at all he was arrested and carried away by the secret police.... Now for the first time, I believed that slave labor camps existed.... I said ‘this is evil, absolute evil. Of this evil I am a part.’ ... If Communism were evil, what was left but moral chaos? .... The rags that fell from me were not only Communism. What fell was the whole web of the materialist modern mind – the luminous shroud which it has spun about the spirit of man, paralyzing in the name of rationalism the instinct of his soul for God, denying in the name of knowledge the reality of the soul...."

"I salute Marshal Stalin, the great champion, and I firmly believe that our 20 years' treaty with Russia will prove to be one of the most lasting and durable factors in preserving the peace and the good order and the progress of Europe."

"Stalin's strategy at the end of World War II was to acquire a small "buffer zone between Russia and Germany, consisting of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, and most of Germany. In an effort to garner public support in these nations, Stalin mounted a public-relations campaign around the upbeat theme "Maybe We Won't Have Your Whole Family Shot," and in 1945 Eastern Europe decided to join the Communist bloc by a vote of 28,932,084,164,504,029-0. Heartened by this mandate, Stalin immediately ordered construction work to begin on the Iron Curtain, which was given its name by Sir Winston Churchill, who, in a historic anecdote at a dinner party, said, "Madam, I may be drunk, but an iron curtain has descended upon BLEAAARRRGGGHHH.""

"There was an old bastard named Lenin Who did two or three million men in. That's a lot to have done in But where he did one in That old bastard Stalin did ten in."

"He had found Russia working with wooden ploughs and leaving it equipped with atomic piles."

"Every crime was possible to Stalin, for there was not one he had not committed. Whatever standards we use to take his measure, in any event — let us hope for all time to come — to him will fall the glory of being the greatest criminal in history. For in him were joined the senselessness of a Caligula with the refinement of a Borgia and the brutality of a Tsar Ivan the Terrible."

"Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. He was simple, calm and courageous. He seldom lost his poise; pondered his problems slowly, made his decisions clearly and firmly; never yielded to ostentation nor coyly refrained from holding his rightful place with dignity. He was the son of a serf but stood calmly before the great without hesitation or nerves. But also - and this was the highest proof of his greatness - he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate."

"Apparently, father was a Georgian when he was younger."

"Stalinism is worse than fascism, more ruthless, barbarous, unjust, immoral, anti-democratic, unredeemed by any hope or scruple, . . . better described as superfascist."

"Stalin showed in the course of this conversation a remarkable knowledge and understanding of international affairs. In the latter respect his sympathies seemed broader than those of Litvinov though his conclusions were no less firm. Stalin spoke throughout in measured tones so quiet that at times Litvinov himself could not catch what he said. His displayed no emotion whatever except for an occasional chuckle or flash of wit. Impression left upon us was a man of strong oriental traits of character with unshakeable assurance and control, whose courtesy in no way hid from us an implacable ruthlessness."

"Stalin impressed me from the first and my opinion of his abilities has not wavered. His personality made itself felt without effort or exaggeration. He had natural good manners, perhaps a Georgian inheritance. Though I knew the man to be without mercy, I respected the quality of his mind and even felt a sympathy which I have never been able entirely to analyse. Perhaps this was because of Stalin's pragmatic approach. It was easy to forget that I was talking to a Party man, certainly no one could have been less doctrinaire. I cannot believe that Stalin ever had any affinity with Marx, he never spoke of him as if he did. During our several meetings in the war, sometimes with Churchill but as often alone, I always found the encounter stimulating, grey and stern though the agenda often had to be. I have never known a man handle himself better in conference. Well-informed at all points that were of concern to him, Stalin was prudent but not slow. Seldom raising his voice, a good listener, prone to doodling, he was the quietest dictator I have ever known, with the exception of Dr. Salazar. Yet the strength was there, unmistakably."

"We were confident that Russia recognised that the continued integrity, tranquillity and prosperity of British territories were an advantage to peace. Mr. Molotov replied that I had accurately defined the attitude of the Soviet Government towards His Majesty's Government. The Soviet Government had no desire to interfere in any way in the internal affairs of the British Empire. Stalin confirmed this."

"Stalin went on to speak at some length of Germany. The Germans were a great and capable people with exceptional powers of organisation and great industrial strength. Moreover they were smarting from a sense of injury inflicted upon them by the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. We must expect that they would be actuated by motives of revenge. Stalin was perhaps more understanding of the German point of view than Litvinov, in the sense that he was less scrupulous and had no prejudice against the Nazis as such, which Litvinov no doubt felt for their treatment of the Jews... Stalin said that German diplomacy was generally clumsy, but maintained that the only way to meet the present situation was by some scheme of pacts. Germany must be made to realise that if she attacked any other nation she would have Europe against her. As an illustration he said: "We are six of us in this room; if Maisky chooses to go for any one of us, then we must fall on Maisky." He chuckled at the idea, Maisky grinned somewhat nervously. Stalin continued that only by this means would peace be preserved. The League as it was today was not strong enough for the purpose. It had suffered too many humiliations; even Paraguay had been able to flout it with impunity, he added with some exaggeration... It would be fatal to let events drift, since there was no time to lose if a check were to be placed on a potential aggressor. That should be in our power now, when actual war was probably some little time distant. At the last moment a check might fail."

"Both Lenin and Stalin killed millions or workers and peasants, their left-wing ideological opponents, and even members of the Bolshevik party. This bloody and treacherous history is why them is so much rivalry and hostility between Marxist-Leninist and Trotskyite parties today, and it is why the “workers’ states,” whether in Cuba, China, Vietnam, or Korea are such oppressive bureaucracies over their people."

"We reject the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is unbridled oppression, and the Marxist-Leninists and Stalinists must be made to answer for it. Millions have been murdered by Stalin in the name of fighting an internal class war, and millions more were murdered in China, Poland, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and other countries by Communist movements which followed Stalin’s prescription for ."

"'Socialism in one country' was Stalin's solution to the problem that had repeatedly divided the leadership of the Bolshevik Party since Lenin's death in 1924. How could the revolutionary regime achieve the industrialization of Russia's backward rural economy without the resources of the more developed West? Trotsky had seen world revolution as the only answer. When that failed to materialize, other Bolshevik leaders, notably Nikolai Bukharin, were inclined to conclude that rapid industrialization was no longer an option. The pace would have to be slow. Stalin, ruthlessly positioning himself to be Lenin's successor - suppressing Lenin's deathbed warning against him - rode roughshod over these rarefied debates. Rapid industrialization, he insisted, was possible within the borders of the Soviet Union. All that was needed was a plan, and the iron willpower that had won the civil war. What Stalin meant by 'socialism in one country' was a new revolution - an economic revolution that he, the self-styled 'man of steel', would lead. Under the first Five-Year Plan, Soviet output was to be increased by a fifth. Managers were encouraged to 'over-fulfil their quotas'; workers were exhorted to work superhumanly long shifts in imitation of the heroic miner and shock worker (udarnik) Aleksei Stakhanov."

"To the Western Left, of course, there always seemed a profound difference between communism and fascism. Until as late as the 1980s, Jürgen Habermas and others zealously upheld the dogma that the Third Reich could not legitimately be compared with Stalin's Soviet Union. But were not Stalin and his German counterpart in reality just two grim faces of totalitarianism? Was there any real difference between Stalin's 'socialism in one country' and Hitler's National Socialism, except that one was put into practice a few years before the other? We can now see just how many of the things that were done in German concentration camps during the Second World War were anticipated in the Gulag: the transportation in cattle trucks, the selection into different categories of prisoner, the shaving of heads, the dehumanizing living conditions, the humiliating clothing, the interminable roll-calling, the brutal and arbitrary punishments, the differentiation between the determined and the doomed. Yes, the regimes were very far from identical, as we shall see. But it is at least suggestive that when the teenage zek Yuri Chirkov arrived at Solovetsky, the slogan that greeted him was 'Through Labour - Freedom!' - a lie identical to the wrought-iron legend Arbeit Macht Frei that would later welcome prisoners to Auschwitz."

"Stalin was a guy like we are, not only that he considered himself a revolutionary and lived like one, but he was a character in the truest sense of the word."

"Josef Stalin was probably the most successful dictator in history. He brought a vast county under such direct personal control that he was able to kill millions of his citizens with impunity. He made the Soviet Union one of the world's greatest powers. He won wars, imposed his regime on Eastern Europe and saw the triumph of Communism in China. He died in his bed after a long time in power."

"Lenin and Stalin have evidenced their outstanding brilliance as mass leaders in every revolutionary requirement: in Marxian theory, political strategy, the building of mass organizations, and in the development of the mass struggle. The characteristic feature of their work is its many-sidedness. Both men of action as well as of thought, they have exemplified in their activities that coordination of theory and practice which is so indispensable to the success of the every-day struggles of the masses and the final establishment of socialism. Both have worked in the clearest realization of the twin truths that there can be no revolutionary movement without revolutionary theory, and that revolutionary theory unsupported by organized mass struggle must remain sterile."

"Stalin's postwar goals were security for himself, his regime, his country, and his ideology, in precisely that order."

"The names of Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler will forever be linked to the tragic course of European history in the first half of the twentieth century. Only weeks after the Russian Revolution the Bolsheviks created secret police forces far more brutal than any that had existed under the tsar. The Nazis followed suit and were no sooner in power than they instituted the dreaded Gestapo. Under both regimes millions of people were incarcerated in concentration camps where they were tortured and frequently worked to death."

"Since Stalin began his invasion of Spain, the march of his henchmen has been leaving death and ruin behind them. Destruction of numerous collectives, the introduction of the Tcheka with its “gentle” methods of treating political opponents, the arrest of thousands of revolutionaries, and the murder in broad daylight of others. All this and more, has Stalin’s dictatorship given Spain, when he sold arms to the Spanish people in return for good gold. Innocent of the jesuitical trick of “our beloved comrade” Stalin, the CNT-FAI could not imagine in their wildest dreams the unscrupulous designs hidden behind the seeming solidarity in the offer of arms from Russia. Their need to meet Franco’s military equipment was a matter of life and death. The Spanish people had not a moment to lose if they were not to be crushed. What wonder if they saw in Stalin the saviour of the anti-Fascist war? They have since learned that Stalin helped to make Spain safe against the Fascists so as to make it safer for his own ends."

"Stalin was, Mr. Montefiore, writes, “that rare combination: both ‘intellectual’ and killer.” The roots of violence ran deep in his family life and in Gori, his hometown, where street brawling was the principal sport. Soso, as Stalin, born Josef Djugashvili, was called, suffered savage beatings from both his alcoholic father and his doting mother, who alternated smothering affection with harsh corporal punishment. When Stalin, later in life, asked his mother why she had beaten him so much, she replied, “It didn’t do you any harm.” A brilliant but rebellious student at the religious schools he attended, and a published poet of great promise, Soso took up radical politics while still in his teens, his approach already shaped by the tactics of the seminary's administration — “surveillance, spying, invasion of inner life, violation of feelings,” as he later described them."

"Stalin was better informed than Roosevelt, more realistic than Churchill, in some ways the most effective of the war leaders."

"One of the stories they told me during my visit concerned the fate of German Communists, many of them Jewish, who had been in exile in the Soviet Union in the late 1930s. As a sort of perverse good-will gesture, Stalin handed these German Communists over to the Gestapo after the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. They were, of course, immediately sent to concentration camps."

"The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind."

"The Soviet leaders accused Comrade Stalin of allegedly interfering in other parties, of imposing the views of the Bolshevik Party upon others. We can bear witness to the fact that at no time did comrade Stalin do such a thing towards us, towards the Albanian people and the Party of Labor of Albania, he always behaved as a great Marxist, as an outstanding internationalist, as a comrade, brother and sincere friend of the Albanian people. In 1945, when our people were threatened with starvation, comrade Stalin ordered the ships loaded with grain destined for the Soviet people, who also were in dire need of food at that time, and sent the grain at once to the Albanian people. Whereas, the present Soviet leaders permit themselves these ugly deeds."

"Did Stalin make mistakes? Of course he did. In so long a period filled with heroism, trials, struggle, triumphs, it is inevitable not only for Joseph Stalin personally but also for the leadership as a collective body to make mistakes. Which is the party and who is the leader that can claim to have made no mistakes in their work? When the existing leadership of the Soviet Union is criticized, the comrades of the Soviet leadership advise us to look ahead and let bygones be bygones, they tell us to avoid polemics, but when it comes to Stalin, they not only did not look ahead but they turned right round, completely backward, in order to track down only the weak spots in Stalin's work."

"The cult of the individual of Stalin should, of course be overcome. But can it be said, as it has been claimed, that Stalin himself was the sponsor of this cult of the individual? The cult of the individual should be overthrown without fail, but was it necessary and was it right to go to such lengths as to point the finger at any one who mentioned Stalin's name, to look askance at any one who used a quotation from Stalin with great speed and zeal? Certain persons smashed statues raised to Stalin and changed the names of cities that had been named after him. But why go any further?"

"We are asked by the supporters of Stalin's government to believe that the best and shortest road to liberty is through military servitude; that the most suitable preparation for responsible self-government is a tyranny employing police espionage, delation, legalized terrorism and press censorship; that the proper education for future freemen and peace-lovers is that which was and is still being used by Prussian militarists."

"He wants to turn the whole world upside down. If you hadn't taken him to school he'd be a craftsmen, now he's in prison. I'll kill such a son with my own hands, he's disgraced me."

"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."

"Trotsky, and all that Trotsky represented, was Stalin's real fear."

"Comrade Koba told you that we were against you and demanded your sacking from the Committee, but I promise nothing of the sort happened and everything Koba told you was a malicious lie! Yes: a calumny to discredit us! I just wonder at the man's impudence. I know how worthless he is, but I didn't expect such "courage." But it turns out that he'll use any means if he thinks the ends justify them. The end in this case — the ambition — is to present himself as a great man before the nation. But ... God didn't grant him the right gifts, so he has to resort to intrigues, lies and other "bagatelles." Such a filthy person wanted to pollute our sacred mission with sewage!"

"The negative characteristics of Stalin, which, in Lenin's time, were only incipient, transformed themselves during the last years into a grave abuse of power by Stalin, which caused untold harm to our party. We have to consider seriously and analyse correctly this matter in order that we may preclude any possibility of a repetition in any form whatever of what took place during the life of Stalin, who absolutely did not tolerate collegiality in leadership and in work, and who practiced brutal violence, not only toward everything which opposed him, but also toward that which seemed, to his capricious and despotic character, contrary to his concepts. Stalin acted not through persuasion, explanation and patient cooperation with people, but by imposing his concepts and demanding absolute submission to his opinion. Whoever opposed these concepts or tried to prove his viewpoint and the correctness of his position was doomed to removal from the leadership collective and to subsequent moral and physical annihilation. This was especially true during the period following the 17th party congress, when many prominent party leaders and rank-and-file party workers, honest and dedicated to the cause of communism, fell victim to Stalin's despotism."

"Stalin knew just what it was he wanted when he came to Teheran, and he got it. Stalin is a stark realist, and there is no foolishness about him. He speaks briefly and directly to the point- not a wasted word."

"A democracy can be highly illiberal, while on the other hand an absolute ruler could be a thorough liberal—without being for this reason the least bit democratic. Even a dictator, theoretically, could be a liberal. [...] A purely military dictatorship based on the bayonets and sabres of a handful of professional soldiers has greater liberal potentialities (one has only to compare Franco, Oliveira Salazar and Pétain with Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin)."

"The German-Soviet pact was...a shameless exhibition, on Stalin's part, of complete indifference to the fate of the working-class outside the Soviet Union: and the attack on Finland, like the absorption of the Baltic Republics, was an example of strategic imperialism."

"As regards nationalism I am fully in agreement with you that we ought to take this up more seriously. We have a marvellous Georgian who has sat down to write a big article for Prosveshcheniye, for which he has collected all the Austrian and other materials."

"Stalin is too rude and this defect, although quite tolerable in our midst and in dealing among us Communists, becomes intolerable in a Secretary-General. That is why I suggest the comrades think about a way of removing Stalin from that post and appointing another man in his stead who in all other respects differs from Comrade Stalin in having only one advantage, namely, that of being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite, and more considerate to the comrades, less capricious, etc."

"Humans beings do respond to love; they do have a feeling for truth and justice, they do dislike authority and repression; they do have prejudices against murder... The Stalin Regime has done its best to bring out in the Russians the reverse of the feelings listed above."

"Stalin was to a remarkable degree in the tradition of the great Czars even to the extent of the paranoiac excesses which he shared with Ivan."

"We were slaves in Egypt, my mother said, and today we're slaves of Stalin, exiled to hard labor in the Siberian taiga, without rights and without the slightest hope of rescue."

"You protest, and with justice, each time Hitler jails an opponent; but you forget that Stalin and company have jailed and murdered a thousand times as many. It seems to me, and indeed the evidence is plain, that compared to the Moscow brigands and assassins, Hitler is hardly more than a common Ku Kluxer and Mussolini almost a philanthropist."

"Both anti-fascism and anti-communism have utterly lost their meaning since Hitler and Stalin have ceased to conceal their alliance from the world. [...] I predicted the cooperation between the Nazis and Bolsheviks as early as 1925 in my article "Anti-Marxism.""

"The fact that the capitalists and entrepreneurs [in Germany], faced with the alternative of Communism or Nazism, chose the latter, does not require any further explanation. They preferred to live as shop managers under Hitler than to be "liquidated" as "bourgeois" by Stalin."

"I was frankly horrified at the architectural exhibition that the U.S.S.R. has been showing in Detroit. Nothing that Trotsky could say against Stalin's regime is half as eloquent as the self-confession of this architecture: the same bastard classicism that the financiers and imperialists of Nineteen Hundred in America conjured up as emblem of their power. Only one thing was more sickening than these dead forms: the dishonest apologetics that accompanied them."

"But the privation, especially of the upper and middle-class peasantry, was very great, and often it seemed that the whole ambitious scheme would collapse, and perhaps carry the Soviet Government with it. It required immense courage to hold on. Many prominent Bolsheviks thought that the strain and suffering caused by the agricultural programme were too great and there should be a relaxation. But not so Stalin. Grin-fly and silently he held on. He was no talker, he hardly spoke in public. He seemed to be the iron image of an inevitable fate going ahead to the predestined goal. And something of his courage and determination spread among the members of the Communist Party and other workers in Russia."

"Sir...In the early hours of this morning Marshal Stalin passed away... When we think of Marshal Stalin, all kinds of thoughts come to...my mind...looking back at these 35 years or so, many figures stand out, but perhaps no single figure has moulded and affected and influenced the history of these years more than Marshal Stalin. He became gradually almost a legendary figure, sometimes a man of mystery, at other times a person who had an intimate bond not with a few but with vast numbers of persons. He proved himself great in peace and in war. He showed an indomitable will and courage which few possess...here was a man of giant stature...who ultimately would be remembered by the way he built up his great country...but the fact remains of his building up that great country, which was a tremendous achievement, and in addition to that the remarkable fact...is that he was not only famous in his generation but...he was in a sense ‘intimate’...with vast numbers of human beings, not only the vast numbers in the Soviet Union with whom he moved in an intimate way, in a friendly way, in an almost family way...So here was this man who created in his life-time this bond of affection and admiration among vast numbers of human eings...But every one must necessarily agree about his giant stature and about his mighty achievements. So it is right that we should pay our tribute to him on this occasion because the occasion is not merely the passing away of a great figure but...in the sense of the ending of a certain era in history...Some...describe him as...[a] gentle person... Marshal Stalin was something much more than the head of a State. He was great in his own right way, whether he occupied the office or not. I believe that his influence was exercised generally in favour of peace..."

"Of course, fanatical Communists and Russophiles generally can be respected, even if they are mistaken. But for people like ourselves, who suspect that something has gone very wrong with the Soviet Union, I consider that willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty."

"I believe that in the future we shall come to feel that Stalin's foreign policy, instead of being so diabolically clever as it is claimed to be, has been merely opportunistic and stupid."

"I would not condemn Stalin and his associates merely for their barbaric and undemocratic methods. It is quite possible that, even with the best intentions, they could not have acted otherwise under the conditions prevailing there. But on the other hand it was of the utmost importance to me that people in western Europe should see the Soviet regime for what it really was. Since 1930 I had seen little evidence that the USSR was progressing towards anything that one could truly call Socialism. On the contrary, I was struck by clear signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society, in which the rulers have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class. Moreover, the workers and intelligentsia in a country like England cannot understand that the USSR of today is altogether different from what it was in 1917. It is partly that they do not want to understand (i.e. they want to believe that, somewhere, a really Socialist country does actually exist), and partly that, being accustomed to comparative freedom and moderation in public life, totalitarianism is completely incomprehensible to them."

"Stalin carried with him all the disadvantages of dictatorship—the excessive centralization, the pall of fear enveloping subordinates—but he brought a powerful will to bear on the Soviet war effort that motivated those around him and directed their energies. In the process he expected, and got, heroic sacrifices from his besieged people. The 'personality cult' developed around him in the 1930s made this appeal possible in wartime. It is difficult to imagine that any other Soviet leader at the time could have wrung such efforts from the population. There is a sense in which the Stalin cult was necessary to the Soviet war effort. It provided a common focus of loyalty, and promoted a growing conviction about ultimate victory. That people suspended their disbelief, that they colluded with a myth later tarnished by revelations of the brutal nature of the wartime regime, should not blind us to the fact that Stalin's grip on the Soviet Union may have helped more than it hindered the pursuit of victory."

"The chaotic conditions of 1932 and 1933, when collectivization was at its height, generated the worst famine of the century. In the grain-rich regions of the Ukraine, the northern Caucasus and Kazakhstan, peasant resistance brought on the full fury of the Party. The farmers' own food was seized, even the seed for the following year's planting. Stalin ordered the security police to seal off the whole of the Ukraine from the rest of the Soviet Union to prevent anyone from leaving or food from getting in. It was almost certainly Stalin's single most murderous act. The most recent Russian estimates indicate a death toll of 4.2 million in the Ukraine alone in 1933. Whole villages starved to death or were dispatched by epidemics to which there was scant bodily resistance. In Kazakhstan the mainly nomadic farmers were forced into crude camps and left to die. An estimated 1.7 million, almost half the population of the republic, perished in the most wretched conditions. Thousands fled across the Soviet border to escape the death camps. In total an estimated 7 million fell victim to the class war launched in the countryside. Stalin told a critic in 1933 that it was the fault of the peasantry, for waging "silent war" against the Soviet state."

"During the years of Stalin's reign, the Soviet nation made dramatic gains in literacy, industrial wages, health care, and women's rights. These accomplishments usually go unmentioned when the Stalinist era is discussed. To say that "socialism didn't work" is to ignore that it did. In Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Mongolia, North Korea, and Cuba, revolutionary communism created a life for the mass of people that was far better than the wretched existence they had endured under feudal lords, military bosses, foreign colonizers, and Western capitalists. The end result was a dramatic improvement in the living conditions for hundreds of millions of people on a scale never before or since witnessed in history."

"If, in a bad dream, we had seen all of the horrors in store for us after the war, we should have been sorry not to see Stalin go down together with Hitler: an end to the war in favour of our allies, civilized countries with democratic traditions, would have meant a hundred times less suffering for our people than that which Stalin again inflicted on it after his victory."

"The Soviet Union was, at its slender best of times, a tyranny, and during the long reign of Joseph Stalin a mechanism for killing people distinguised from the "Hitlerzeit" only by motive."

"Men of all political beliefs, friends and adversaries, must today recognise the immense stature of Joseph Stalin. He is a giant of history and his memory will not know sunset."

"We are dismayed at this death because of the void that Joseph Stalin leaves in his people and in humanity as a whole. Gentlemen, if you abandon your political hostilities for a moment, as I am abandoning them at this moment, you must recognise with me that this man's life coincided for thirty years with the course of humanity itself."

"The fate of the Italian working people was as close to Joseph Stalin's heart as the fate of his own people and that of all the peoples of the earth. He always fought for peace, aware that those who pay the highest tribute of blood and suffering, in war, are his peasants and workers. And as a good socialist, he knew that one should not want war in order to destroy what the present society has built, but should strive to transform the old society in order to build a new one. This was his firm will; this is what he fought for in his later years. He has always rejected any provocation, he has always renounced acts of force in order to defend this good that belongs not only to his people, but to all mankind."

"He ended his day well, though too early for us and for the fate of the world. His last word was one of peace. Well, at this hour that is so sad for us, we hope that this call for peace, which reflects the will of all the workers of the earth, will not fall on deaf ears, but will be taken up by all those who hold the fate of peoples in their hands."

"Orwell in 1948 understood that despite the Axis defeat, the will to fascism had not gone away, that far from having seen its day it had perhaps not yet even come into its own — the corruption of spirit, the irresistible human addiction to power were already long in place, all well-known aspects of the Third Reich and Stalin's USSR, even the British Labour party — like first drafts of a terrible future."

"Russia's youths admire Soviet dictator Josef Stalin -- who presided over the deaths of millions of people -- and want to kick immigrants out of Russia, according to a poll released on Wednesday. The poll, carried out by the Yuri Levada Centre, was presented by two U.S. academics who called it "The Putin Generation: the political views of Russia's youth". When asked if Stalin was a wise leader, half of the 1,802 respondents, aged from 16 to 19, agreed he was. "Fifty-four percent agreed that Stalin did more good than bad," said Theodore Gerber, a sociologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Forty-six percent disagreed with the statement that Stalin was a cruel tyrant.""

"For Stalin, even more than for his partners, the wartime alliance constituted a marriage of convenience. He never shook off his fear that the British and Americans might sign a separate peace with Hitler—he even alluded to this concern obliquely during Churchill’s visit in October 1944—and their delays in opening a second front were seen as sinister confirmation. Having turned the Nazi tide by its own efforts, the Soviet Union, he believed, must also provide for its own postwar security; for Stalin, that meant preventing Germany from becoming a threat once again, probably by dismembering the country into small states on the pre-Bismarck model. It also required a quiescent, client state in Poland—historically the gateway for German aggression. More generally, Stalin wanted to regain Russian territories lost in World War I, including eastern Poland and the Baltic states, and to expand into traditional czarist areas of influence, particularly around the Black Sea (Russia’s gateway to the Mediterranean) and on the Pacific. The concept of territorial security was therefore fundamental to his regime."

"So Stalin was very different from Hitler, a true megalomaniac who lusted for world domination. But, because of both his personal background and recent Soviet experience, Stalin’s craving for security was “insatiable”—he was always seeking more territory and more influence—and this lay at the root of growing friction with the West. Furthermore, as a Marxist-Leninist, Stalin never abandoned the hope of eventual international revolution. He recognized that in the modern world change could come by political means—“today socialism is possible even under the English monarchy”—but believed that the vast upheavals of the war were part of the structural “crisis of capitalism.” For the moment, he said in January 1945, the Soviet Union had joined the “democratic” faction of capitalists against the “fascist” faction, because Hitler posed the greater threat, but “in the future” the Soviets would confront their former allies."

"In the winter of 1944–5, however, Stalin was still concentrating on victory in Europe and then on entering the war against Japan to secure his territorial aims. Moreover he knew that his shattered country was in no position for a new conflict in the immediate future. In fact he anticipated substantial economic aid, indirectly via agreed reparations from Germany and directly through a peacetime version of American lend-lease. This meant staying on good terms with his wartime allies. The Italian and French communist parties, both strongly placed because of their prominence in the wartime resistance, were warned against a revolutionary bid for power because Italy and France were both firmly in the British and American sphere. Stalin took the same line on Greece once Churchill had made clear Britain’s special interest. On the other hand, he treated the rest of the percentages deal as giving him the carte blanche he desired in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. Guided by Marxist-Leninist ideology about the innate antagonisms of the capitalist powers, he was also ready to exploit policy differences between Britain and America. Roosevelt’s ostentatious digs at Churchill during the Teheran conference—intended to relieve Stalin’s suspicions of a combined Anglo-American front—seemed to confirm the aptness of this tactic. He felt he could work with the Allies while playing one off against the other."

"The surprise of Barbarossa devastated Josef Stalin. By 28 June 1941, after a week of continuous meetings, the Soviet dictator had succumbed to deep depression. Leaving the defense commissariat the next day with several Politburo members, he had burst out loudly, "Lenin left us with a great inheritance and we, his heirs, have fucked it all up!" A Politburo delegation that tracked him down at his dacha at the beginning of July found him sitting in an armchair staring, with a strange look on his face. By the time he rallied, the Luftwaffe was bombing Moscow. Vyachaslev Molotov and Anastas Mikoyan wrote the first war speech Stalin delivered by radio to the Soviet people, on 3 July 1941. "Comrades, citizens, brothers and sisters, fighters of our Army and Navy!" he began. "I am speaking to you, my friends!" He had never spoken that way before."

"Marxism and Freedom (1957) by Raya Dunayevskaya is a history of the process of Marx's thought, as it evolved out of eighteenth-century philosophy and Hegel's dialectic through the mass political movements of the nineteenth century, as it became adapted and modified by Engels, Trotsky, and Lenin and, finally, in Dunayevskaya's words, "totally perverted" by Stalin."

"A historical and ideological fact that I consider almost a "proof" of loyalty in the bolshevism ideals: the matter of Stalin. Distrust those who disparage or even forget the figure of the continuer of Lenin's work, who was able to build socialism in the USSR and defeat the Nazi beast."

"Nowadays he's depicted as a reciprocal of Hitler, his name serves the purpose of fighting communism. Yet just remembering him makes the bosses tremble. He built the first socialist state and without him nazism would have won. His Russian name is translated as "steel". Stalin, terror of the fascists and of the false communists. Honor and glory to you!"

"At the heart of the Second World War lies a giant and abiding paradox: although the western war was fought in defence of civilization and democracy, and although it needed to be fought and had to be won, the chief victor was a dictator who was as psychologically warped and capable of evil as Adolf Hitler himself."

"Russians are lucky - they have socialism and Stalin."

"The documentary and anecdotal evidence is overwhelming and indisputable; the Red Army, which had behaved so heroically on the battlefield, raped the women of Germany as part of their reward, with the active collusion of their officers up to and including Stalin. Indeed he explicitly excused their behaviour on more than one occasion, seeing it as part of the rights of the conqueror. "What is so awful in his having fun with a woman, after such horrors?" Stalin asked Marshal Tito about the ordinary Russian soldier in April 1945. "You have imagined the Red Army to be ideal. And it is not ideal, nor can it be ... The important thing is that it fights Germans." As well as for the sexual gratification of the soldiers, mass rape was intended as a humiliation and revenge on Germany."

"In Russia, the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat has not led to Socialism, but to the domination of a new bureaucracy over the proletariat and the whole people. ... What the Russian autocrats and their supporters fear most is that the success of libertarian Socialism in Spain might prove to their blind followers that the much vaunted "necessity of dictatorship" is nothing but one vast fraud which in Russia has led to the despotism of Stalin and is to serve today in Spain to help the counter-revolution to a victory over the revolution of the workers and the peasants."

"I may say that I 'got along fine' with Marshal Stalin. He is a man who combines a tremendous, relentless determination with a stalwart good humor. I believe he is truly representative of the heart and soul of Russia; and I believe that we are going to get along very well with him and the Russian people - very well indeed."

"Stalin's language is full of reminiscences of the theological seminary in which he received his training. What the world needs is not dogma, but an attitude of scientific inquiry, combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer."

"I am completely at a loss to understand how it came about that some people who are both humane and intelligent could find something to admire in the vast slave camp produced by Stalin."

"They [Lenin and Stalin] formed the world's first Marxist government, remained at the peak of the state for the rest of their days, sacrificed millions of lives at the pitiless altar of their utopian ideology, and ruled the imperium, between them, for the next thirty-six years."

"In the name of Stalin we always won, in the name of Stalin all victories will be ours."

"We know that our struggle is not easy, that it will still be long and hard because the big capital is determined to betray the fatherland and to commit all kind of crimes just to save its privileges; yet we know that the path showed us by Stalin is the right one and that following this path we'll be able to conquer victory."

"Stalin had the capacity to reformulate utopias. Stalinism itself was a retreat: from the impulse toward European revolution that had inspired the Bolsheviks in 1917, to the defense of the Soviet Union after that revolution did not take place. When the Red Army failed to spread communism to Europe in 1920, Stalin had a fallback plan: socialism would be made in one country, the Soviet Union. When his Five-Year Plan to build socialism brought disaster, he presided over the starvation of millions. But he explained the events as part of the policy, and reaped the benefits as the fearsome father of the nation and the dominant figure in the politburo. After turning the NKVD against the kulaks and the national minorities in 1937-1938, he explained that this was necessary for the security of the homeland of socialism. After the retreat of the Red Army in 1941, and indeed after its victory in 1945, he appealed to Russian nationalism. When the Cold War began, he blamed Jews (and others, of course) for the vulnerabilities of the Soviet Union."

"Hitler preached "superior and inferior races." Stalin challenged him in one of the most sweeping statements ever made of human equality: "Neither language nor color of skin nor cultural back-wardeness nor the stage of political development can justify national and race inequality"."

"Those who urge an alliance with Assad cite the example of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet despot who became an ally of Western democracies against Nazi Germany. I never liked historical comparisons and like this one even less. To start with, the Western democracies did not choose Stalin as an ally; he was thrusted upon them by the turn of events. When the Second World War started Stalin was an ally of Hitler thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviet Union actively participated in the opening phase of the war by invading Poland from the east as the Germans came in from the West. Before that, Stalin had rendered Hitler a big service by eliminating thousands of Polish army officers in the Katyn massacre. Between September 1939 and June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin was an objective ally of Hitler. Stalin switched sides when he had no choice if he wanted to save his skin. The situation in Syria today is different. There is no alliance of democracies which, thanks to Obama’s enigmatic behavior, lack any strategy in the Middle East. Unlike Stalin, Assad has not switched sides if only because there is no side to switch to. Assad regards ISIS as a tactical ally against other armed opposition groups. This is why Russia is now focusing its air strikes against non-ISIS armed groups opposed to Assad. More importantly, Assad has none of the things that Stalin had to offer the Allies. To start with Stalin could offer the vast expanse of territory controlled by the Soviet Union and capable of swallowing countless German divisions without belching. Field Marshal von Paulus’ one-million man invasion force was but a drop in the ocean of the Soviet landmass. In contrast, Assad has no territorial depth to offer. According to the Iranian General Hossein Hamadani, who was killed in Aleppo, Assad is in nominal control of around 20 percent of the country. Stalin also had an endless supply of cannon fodder, able to ship in millions from the depths of the Urals, Central Asia and Siberia. In contrast, Assad has publicly declared he is running out of soldiers, relying on Hezbollah cannon fodder sent to him by Tehran. If Assad has managed to hang on to part of Syria, it is partly because he has an air force while his opponents do not. But even that advantage has been subject to the law of diminishing returns. Four years of bombing defenseless villages and towns has not changed the balance of power in Assad's favor. This may be why his Russian backers decided to come and do the bombing themselves. Before, the planes were Russian, the pilots Syrian. Now both planes and pilots are Russian, underlining Assad's increasing irrelevance. Stalin's other card, which Assad lacks, consisted of the USSR's immense natural resources, especially the Azerbaijan oilfields which made sure the Soviet tanks could continue to roll without running out of petrol. Assad in contrast has lost control of Syria's oilfields and is forced to buy supplies from ISIS or smugglers operating from Turkey. There are other differences between Stalin then and Assad now. Adulated as “the Father of the Nation” Stalin had the last word on all issues. Assad is not in that position. In fact, again according to the late Hamadani in his last interview published by Iranian media, what is left of the Syrian Ba'athist regime is run by a star chamber of shadowy characters who regard Assad as nothing but a figurehead."

"The late Leonid Krasin ... was the first, if I am not mistaken, to call Stalin an "Asiatic". In saying that, he had in mind no problematical racial attributes, but rather that blending of grit, shrewdness, craftiness and cruelty which has been considered characteristic of the statesmen of Asia. Bukharin subsequently simplified the appellation, calling Stalin "Genghis Khan", manifestly in order to draw attention to his cruelty, which has developed into brutality. Stalin himself, in conversation with a Japanese journalist, once called himself an "Asiatic", not in the old, but rather in the new sense of the word: with that personal allusion he wished to hint at the existence of common interests between the USSR and Japan as against the imperialistic West."

"The dialectics of history have already hooked him and will raise him up. He is needed by all of them; by the tired radicals, by the bureaucrats, by the NEP-men, the upstarts, by all the worms that are crawling out of the upturned soil of the manured revolution. He knows how to meet them on their own ground, he speaks their language and he knows how to lead them. He has the deserved reputation of an old revolutionist, which makes him invaluable to them as a blinder on the eyes of the country. He has will and daring. He will not hesitate to utilize them and to move them against the Party. Right now he is organising himself around the sneaks of the party, the artful dodgers."

"Stalin's communism was Marxism as a religion, fundamentalist religion. Every word of the bible Das Kapital, everything that Marx wrote was true.... Pretty soon, empirical research to find out what was really going on was stopped altogether in the Soviet Union under Stalin. When Stalin took over he discovered that some of the sociologists in Russia were studying the motivation of workers and finding that many of the workers were soldiering on the job. Since Marx said that once the workers were rightly related to the means of production there would be no problem with motivation because the workers would own the company, Stalin decided that the sociologists were lying when they reported that many workers in the Soviet Union were soldiering on the job. Hence, he sent the sociologists into exile in Siberia. Pretty soon, empirical research to find out what was really going on was stopped altogether in the Soviet Union under Stalin. The economy kept declining because they weren't finding out what was really happening. They were taking like the fundamentalists of the American's Bible taking Das Kapital as literally true rather than as it should, I think, be taken."

"I believe that today, under the circumstances of capitalism crisis and the ever-increasing anti-communist reaction, the matter of the approach to the figure of Stalin is not historical or personal, but it's a matter of a burning current political debate. As in 1941, if you considered yourself an enemy of fascism and ready to fight against those fascist gangs, in any case you would have sided with Stalin. Those who thought differently and they considered themselves struggling again Stalinism and against Stalin, they would find themselves on the other side of the front, under the tricolour of general Vlasov."

"As a good marxist, Stalin fought against the bourgeois state, he took charge of its destruction to its very foundations, and then, after destroying the society of exploitation and violence, he built the state of the working class and the farmers on its base."

"The proletarian internationalism of Stalin, as a marxist, wasn't questioned even from his fierce rivals in the ranks of the imperialists (as Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt), while, on this matter, their modern followers still remember the "terrible hand of Moscow", as in the Comintern, in every place on the planet."

"Under the direction of Stalin and the CPSU, the Soviet Union achieved great successes and defeated the most repulsive product of capitalism: the 20th century's fascism."

"I am a marxist, a leninist and I don't even consider disagreeable Stalin, who saved us from Hitler, more than the United States."

"The more power he had, the more power he accumulated and kept in his hands, the more power he wanted."

"The prospects of revolution seem therefore quite restriced. For can a revolution avoid war? It is, however, on this feeble chance that we must stake everything or abandon all hope. An advanced country will not encounter, in the case of revolution, the difficulties which in backward Russia served as a base for the barbarous regime of Stalin. But a war of any scope will give rise to others as formidable."

"I confess that I approached Stalin with a certain amount of suspicion and prejudice. A picture had been built up in my mind of a very reserved and self-centred fanatic, a despot without vices, a jealous monopolizer of power. [...] I still expected to meet a ruthless, hard—possibly doctrinaire—and self-sufficient man at Moscow; a Georgian highlander whose spirit had never completely emerged from its native mountain glen. Yet I had had to recognize that under him Russia was not being merely tyrannized over and held down; it was being governed and it was getting on. [...] All such shadowy undertow, all suspicion of hidden emotional tensions, ceased for ever, after I had talked to him for a few minutes. [...] I have never met a man more candid, fair and honest, and to these qualities it is, and to nothing occult and sinister, that he owes his tremendous undisputed ascendency in Russia."

"We think that Stalin's contribution to the revolution is much more important than the mistakes he made. To use the Chinese way, the score for Stalin would be thirty percent to seventy percent: thirty for his errors and seventy for his merits. Furthermore, Chairman Mao agreed with me on the question of Stalin's score, and, after the twentieth Congress of the CPSU, members of the Communist Party of China expressed a very clear judgment of Stalin."

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

"I consider him one of the greatest persons in the history of mankind. In the history of Russia he was, in my opinion, even greater than Lenin. Until Stalin's death I was anti-Stalinist, but I always regarded him as a brilliant personality."

"I was already a confirmed anti-Stalinist at the age of seventeen .... The idea of killing Stalin filled my thougths and feelings .... We studied the 'technical' possibillities of an attack .... We even practiced. If they had condemned me to death in 1939, their decision would have been just. I had made up a plan to kill Stalin; wasn't that a crime? When Stalin was still alive, I saw things differently, but as I look back over this century, I can state that Stalin was the greatest individual of this century, the greatest political genius. To adopt a scientific attitude about someone is quite different from one's personal attitude."

"Stalin will be rehabilitated, needless to say."

"Stalin is the best brain in polities today. Rut that does not mean that I have become a Bolshevik."

"Stalin is one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. He began as a small clerk, and he has never stopped being a clerk. Stalin owes nothing to rhetoric. He governs from his office, thanks to a bureaucracy that obeys his every nod and gesture."

"Stalin, too, must command our unconditional respect. In his own way he is a hell of a fellow! He knows his models, Genghiz Khan and the others, very well, and the scope of his industrial planning is exceeded only by our own Four Year Plan. And there is no doubt that he is quite determined that there shall be in Russia no unemployment such as one finds in such capitalist States as the United States of America."

"If Stalin had been given another ten or fifteen years, Russia would have become the mightiest State in the world, and two or three centuries would have been required to bring about a change. It is a unique phenomenon! He has raised the standard of living—of that there is no doubt; no one in Russia goes hungry any more. They have built factories where a couple of years ago only unknown villages existed—and factories, mark you, as big as the Hermann Göring Works. They have built railways that are not yet even on our maps. In Germany we start quarrelling about fares before we start building the line! I have read a book on Stalin; I must admit, he is a tremendous personality, an ascetic who took the whole of that gigantic country firmly in his iron grasp."

"Stop sending assassins to murder me... if this doesn't stop, I will send a man to Moscow and there'll be no need to send any more."

"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."