Military Leaders From Russia

"Talks between the Russian and US presidents are important not only for our countries, but for the entire world as well. Russia and the United States bear special responsibility for global security, so they need to act in a balanced way and avoid confrontation"

"I would like to stress, that if we want to strengthen strategic stability, we will require an equal dialogue with mutual consideration of each other’s interests. It is necessary to revive the channels of bilateral communication on strategic stability and create conditions that will allow us to advance strengthening non-proliferation of the WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and means of their delivery, to preserve and adapt, where necessary, mechanisms of arms control. It all will have a positive impact on international stability, peace and security, on the principles of equal and indivisible security for everyone,"

"I would like to note a positive momentum for international stability gained during the Russia–U.S. Summit in Helsinki. It was a good talk. The intent of both presidents to bolster international security is evident. It is regretful, though, that it has not been put into tangible actions. We are ready for a constructive dialogue."

"We, as many other states, are troubled by the situation in nuclear non-proliferation... we call upon all countries to clearly and explicitly adhere to their obligations within the nuclear deal. We think that the unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from the agreement poses a threat to the non-proliferation regime."

"There are a lot of questions on how quickly we can reach denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. We support the American efforts in this area. We stand ready to back the US However, it is concerning that neither a single warhead, nor even a missile has been dismantled to this day....the DPRK has made several direct steps to meet American demands...We think it is high time to think about the whole set of restraints imposed on North Korea...Actions from one side mean that the other side should take steps as well."

"The US has deployed 'Aegis Ashore' missile defense systems in its base in Romania and plans to do the same in Poland... Moreover, these systems are being deployed in direct proximity to our borders. If we were to deploy such missiles near the U.S. territory, wouldn’t it be taken in America as a direct threat to its national security?"

"US accusations against Russia of violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) are groundless... We await clear evidence and continue to deny any groundless accusations."

"Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested... extending the New START for another five years. The Americans are silent...The Treaty...was previously regarded by the majority of countries as a 'golden standard' in disarmament..."

"Moscow hopes that Washington will not delay its response on the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) before it expires... All the more pressing issue is what will happen to nuclear disarmament after 2021, when the New START is set to expire. Due to a deep crisis in the Russia–U.S. relations it would be naive to assume that our countries are likely to conclude a new treaty on strategic offensive arms by 2021..."

"Current relations between Russia and the US struggle through the worst times. Historians, politicians, political scientists cannot recall any other time, when our relations were in such a miserable state. Other countries, international peace and security suffer because of this..."

"US public should think about the rationale of the US authorities’ decision to withdraw from the INF Treaty and hence to relaunch the arms race. This can only serve the interests of the US defence industry, because it holds the promise of huge military contracts. As for the American people, this will only make their lives less safe."

"Aimed at ensuring US hegemony in a world entangled in a network of Pentagon bases, US military spending has brought death and suffering and not freedom or democracy to people. The case in point is Iraq and Libya, where Washington has sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives to its ambitions and destroyed countries that used to be prosperous."

"War is not included in the Second Five-Year Plan."

"The raid made by Comrade Blyukher's forces under impossible conditions can only be equated with Suvorov's crossings in Switzerland."

"Thousands of miles from Moscow, commanded - apparently with a free hand - by the most capable of all Soviet generals, Marshal Vasili Galen-Blücher, the Far Eastern Army is easily the most efficient and the most formidable military force at the command of the Soviet government."

"An outstanding Russian general as well as a reasonable man and a good friend. What was most unusual about him was that he had none of the traits associated with Bolsheviks."

"What dirt, what bitterness, what meanness..."

"A shark has appeared and he wants to devour me. Either he devours me or I eat him. The latter is very unlikely."

"War as a whole, and each operation taken separately, are first of all mathematics and calculations."

"History has literally led me to a complete denial of all that I had been praying for my whole life [...] The only thing I can be proud of — the greatest merit of my life — is that I was able to fundamentally alter my views [...] I feel very happy that by the end of my life I've freed myself from this horrible nightmare, this primitivism."

"Lenin was the antichrist [...] All Russia's great troubles stemmed from Lenin."

"However doomed a man may be, he still has the great luxury of freedom of thought that can carry him soaring over the past and the future, the single attribute that can never be taken away by tyrant or circumstance."

"I was in the hospital, and a soldier in the bed beside me asked: "Why do our soldiers have only one rifle for two or three of our men, when the Germans have automatics?" So I designed one. I was a soldier, and I created a machine gun for a soldier. It was called an Avtomat Kalashnikova, the automatic weapon of Kalashnikov — AK — and it carried the date of its first manufacture, 1947."

"[In] 1944 Russian engineer Mikhail Kalashnikov, supported by a design team, began a competitive development against several other weapon producers to create a new selective-fire rifle that would use the intermediate round. It was a long process, and it should be noted that Kalashnikov himself was not the only key individual behind the design. Another central figure was Aleksandr Zaitsev, who convinced Kalashnikov of the need for a major redesign to enhance reliability. Yet with the war over, in 1948 their 'AK-47' entered army trials and the following year it was adopted as the standard Soviet rifle. In 1959, it was modernized- i.e. cheapened- in terms of its production methods, the receiver being a stamped design rather than machined steel. Other improvements of the AKM, as it was known, included a basic scoop-like muzzle brake, a Parkerized bolt and a wire-cutting bayonet device. The AKM became the defining, most widely distributed model in the AK series."

"Design is rarely art because design, when all is said and done, exists purely to make money. And yet the AK was never designed to do that. In fact Mikhail Kalashnikov lives today on nothing more than a Soviet Army pension. And that's why his most famous creation can be called an art form. And that's what gives it soul."

"Kalashnikov had already distinguished himself by inventing a device that counted the shells a tank had fired and now, as he recuperated from his wounds, he set about designing something that could rival the Germans' MP44. A hand-held sub-machinegun. Something that came to be known as the AK47. It wasn't actually read, as the name implies, until 1947, two years after Hitler's penis had been buried under the Kremlin, but that didn't stop it becoming by far and away the most successful gun in the whole of military history. No patent was ever taken out, which meant anyone with a foundry could set up shop and make one too. And they did. AKs were produced all around the world in such vast numbers that so far 70 million have been sold. And that in turn means that one person in 90 across the whole planet has got one. And as a result of that, it is said that the AK47 has killed more people than the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Think of any conflict since 1947 and it's a fairly safe bet that at least one of the sides has been using AK47s. The warlords in Mogadishu, the Vietcong in Vietnam, the Republican Guard in Iraq. This half-timbered gun has been a 50-year thorn in Uncle Sam's side."

"My aim was to create armaments to protect the borders of my motherland. It is not my fault that the Kalashnikov became very well-known in the world; that it was used in many troubled places. I think the policies of these countries are to blame, not the designers. Man is born to protect his family, his children, his wife. But I want you to know that apart from armaments, I have written three books in which I try to educate our youth to show respect for their families, for old people, for history."

"You see, maybe all these feelings come about because one side wants to liberate itself with arms. But in my opinion, it is the good that prevails. You may live to see the day when good prevails — it will be after I am dead. But the time will come when my weapons will be no more used or necessary."

"Before attempting to create something new, it is vital to have a good appreciation of everything that already exists in this field."

"Whenever I look at TV and I see the weapon I invented to defend my motherland in the hands of these bin Ladens, I ask myself the same question: "How did it get into their hands?" I didn't put it in the hands of bandits and terrorists, and it's not my fault that it has mushroomed uncontrollably across the globe. Can I be blamed that they consider it the most reliable weapon?"

"When a young man, I read somewhere the following: God the Almighty said, "All that is too complex is unnecessary, and it is simple that is needed" ... So this has been my lifetime motto – I have been creating weapons to defend the borders of my fatherland, to be simple and reliable."

"Blame the Nazi Germans for making me become a gun designer … I always wanted to construct agriculture machinery."

"I sleep well. It's the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence."

"I'm proud of my invention, but I'm sad that it is used by terrorists. … I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work — for example a lawnmower."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"These 18-year-old youths Russian conscripts in Grozny] died for Russia, and they died with a smile."

"Everybody keeps saying - reform, reform. The T-72 has proved itself wonderfully in Chechnya. So we will be making reform on the basis of T-72."

"We shall respond to every Chechen shot with thousands of our own."

"The leading force in the struggle for peace and for strengthening cooperation among the peoples is the Soviet Union."

"We are going for the enemy's fortifications. Artillery is doing its share in every phase of the battle. Automatic weapons are so extensively used to-day that we cannot possibly limit our operation to silencing enemy gun emplacements. Drive them underground? No, we have to wipe them out! The artillerymen can no longer be guided merely by orders for the infantry. It is waging battle in its own right."

"The Germans had thought they could replace light artillery with mortars, believing it unnecessary to furnish their troops with light guns and howitzers. The theory was wrong as they found out during the invasion."

"Think of the 40 years of confrontation. What is it we gained?...The old style has exposed itself: it is fruitless."

"We are not pursuing research to develop ABM space systems. There are studies to improve systems of warning against a missile attack, communications and navigation systems and to develop ground-based ABM defences."

"If it is necessary we will find a quick answer and it will not be the way the United States expects it. It will be an answer that devalues the 'Star Wars' program."