Ambassadors Of Russia And The Soviet Union

"Within the Russian Party itself, the first organized opposition to the policies of both Lenin and Trotsky was led by a woman-Alexandra Kollontai. Alexandra was not an Old Bolshevik, but she had joined the Bolshevik Party even before Trotsky had done so and much earlier than I. During these first few years of the Revolution she was a frequent source of both personal and political annoyance to the Party leaders. On more than one occasion the Central Committee had wanted me to substitute for her in the leadership of the women's movement, thus facilitating the campaign against her and isolating her from the women of the masses. Fortunately, I understood this intrigue and refused these offers, emphasizing that no one could do this work so well as she, and trying to augment her prestige and create sympathy for her whenever possible. By the Ninth Congress of the Russian Party, the last vestiges of trade-union autonomy and workers' control in industry was swept away to be replaced by the control of the political had become the leader of the "Workers' Opposition," a protest missars over the trade unions and the workers' soviets. Kollantai movement against the bureaucratic suffocation of the labour unions and the democratic rights of the workers. As there was no possibility, even at that time, of publicly criticizing the Central Committee or of placing an unofficial opinion before the Party rank and file, she was courageous enough to have a pamphlet secretly printed for distribution to the delegates at the Party Convention. I have never seen Lenin so angry as when one of these pamphlets was handed to him at the Convention-in spite of the fact that "opposition" within the Party itself was still supposed to be legitimate. Taking the platform, he denounced Kollontai as the Party's worst enemy, a menace to its unity. He went so far in his attack as to make allusions to certain episodes in Kollontai's intimate life that had nothing whatever to do with the issue. It was the kind of polemic which did no credit to Lenin, and it was on this occasion that I realized the lengths to which Lenin would go in the pursuit of his strategic aims, his opposition to a party opponent. I admired Kollontai for the calm and self-control with which she answered Lenin's attack. Among the examples she quoted of the methods which were used by the Central Committee against Party "rebels" was the attempt of the "Central Committee to send Angelica Balabanoff to Turkestan to eat peaches." Like many other rebellious members of the Party, she was sent away soon after on a diplomatic mission. For old revolutionists like Kollontai it was a punishment to be separated from the field of revolutionary activity, but after years in Norway, Mexico, and Sweden as Soviet ambassador, she seemed to become reconciled to her position and to fall completely into line."

"Kollontai was never a brilliant Marxist scholar or an innovative theoretician as was her friend Rosa Luxemburg, for example. She "discovered" Marx in a copy of Communist Manifesto which she picked up in a bookstore in Germany during the cooling off period forced on her by her parents. It quickly replaced her populism, which had been shallow and emotional, and seemed to pull her previous ideas together in an intellectually satisfying form-a common experience for many Marxist converts."

"Alexandra Kollontay and Angelica Balabanoff were within easy reach, as they were living in the National. I sought out the former first. Mme Kollontay looked remarkably young and radiant, considering her fifty years and the severe operation she had recently undergone. A tall and stately woman, every inch the grande dame rather than the fiery revolutionist. Her attire and suite of two rooms bespoke good taste, the roses on her desk rather startling in the Russian greyness. They were the first I had seen since our deportation. [...] She leaned back in her arm-chair and I began speaking of the harrowing things that had come to my knowledge. She listened attentively without interrupting me, but there was not the slightest indication in her cold, handsome face of any perturbation on account of my recital. "We do have some dull grey spots in our vivid revolutionary picture," she said when I had concluded. "They are un-avoidable in a country so backward, with a people so dark and a social experiment of such magnitude, opposed by the entire world as it is. They will disappear when we have liquidated our military fronts and when we shall have raised the mental level of our masses." I could help in that, she continued. I could work among the women; they were ignorant of the simplest principles of life, physical and otherwise, ignorant of their own functions as mothers and citizens. I had done such fine work of that kind in America, and she could assure me of a much more fertile field in Russia. "Why not join me and stop your brooding over a few dull grey spots?" she said in conclusion; "they are nothing more, dear comrade, really nothing more." People raided, imprisoned, and shot for their ideas! The old and the young held as hostages, every protest gagged, iniquity and favouritism rampant, the best human values betrayed, the very spirit of revolution daily crucified-were all these nothing but "grey, dull spots," I wondered! I felt chilled to the marrow of my bones."

"No American socialist-feminist successfully integrated the anarchist-feminist analysis of domestic oppression into a socialist framework...Nevertheless, a socialist framework existed, in the work of Aleksandra Kollontai. Kollontai, a Russian Marxist revolutionary who participated in the birth of the Bolshevik state, wrote her most extensive analysis of the Woman Question while in exile in Western Europe in the years immediately preceding World War I." Following Bebel and Engels, Kollontai argued that the first requisite for women's emancipation was productive work outside the confines of the domestic circle. However, participation in the work force would not free women unless there were also changes in the industrial system. Ultimately, of course, the workers must overthrow capitalism, Kollontai declared. But, more immediately, socialists should work for shorter hours, less dangerous working conditions, paid maternity leaves, nursery facilities in all factories, and scheduled breaks from work so that mothers could breast feed their babies. Not all socialists agreed with Kollontai on the above issues. Most men and some women refused to countenance the urging of special reforms for women because they believed it undermined the solidarity of the proletariat. But Kollontai further extended her analysis of female oppression to include an attack on the emotional dependence of women upon men."

"Barbara Clements has shown that for Kollontai "woman's inferiority was imbedded in the pattern of erotic love, the most private of human relationships." Socialism for her, therefore, was more than the overthrow of capitalism as an economic system. It promised the creation of a new order in which men and women could live together and love in harmony and in community. Clements has demonstrated Kollontai's unique place within Marxism: "Other contemporaries, most eloquently Virginia Woolf but also feminists such as the Pankhursts, knew the price of female emancipation, but of the Marxists, only Kollontai gave it a place within the ideology. Into a socioeconomic theory that valued rationality as the road to social liberation, Kollontai introduced an emotional understanding of woman alone in an isolating world." Kollontai's emphasis on psychological and emotional liberation was remarkably similar to American anarchist-feminism, but she differed in her insistence on integrating these issues into an uncompromising materialist analysis. She believed that "solitude and women's struggle for independence [were] economically determined and therefore ... soluble. She remained resolutely an ideologue and an optimist.""

"Kollontai's analysis in the pre-World War years did not find its way into the work of American socialist-feminists, and it is not clear that they would have accepted her views had they been exposed to them. Nevertheless, her integration of the most important aspects of anarchist-feminism into socialist ideology offered a tantalizing possibility for the creation of a truly feminist radicalism. That the promise remains to be fulfilled does not detract from her accomplishment."

"Throughout the history of the socialist movement there has, therefore, been a strand of feminist critique from within. Many feminists shared in the vision of a just society, but criticised the ways in which communist parties sought to bring it about. Amongst the Bolsheviks, Inessa Armand and Alexandra Kollontai were early critics of their party's policies and practice, and they, along with anarchist feminists such as Emma Goldman, laid some of the early groundwork in identifying socialism's failures."

"It was a great privilege to work so closely with these wonderful women of our movement...I was very much impressed too with the brilliant and handsome Alexandra Kollontai, who had been active in the woman's movement even in pre-revolutionary days. She had been for a time People's Commissar of Social Welfare. When I first met her, she was one of the leaders of the Workers' Opposition, taking the line that the interests of the trade unions were opposed to those of the Soviet state and the Party. Lenin, to whom she was deeply devoted, convinced her of the fallacy of her position, and she abandoned her oppositionist stand, becoming a loyal supporter of the Party's position. She became Minister Plenipotentiary to Norway, the first woman ambassador in the world, was for a time ambassador to Mexico and is today Soviet Ambassador to Sweden."

"Sedov (Trotsky's son) spoke a lot about the necessity of the maximum, the closest possible connections with Tukhachevsky, inasmuch as, in Trotsky's opinion, Tukhachevsky and the military group were to be the decisive force of the counter-revolutionary action. During the conversation it was also revealed that Trotsky entertained fears regarding Tukhachevsky's Bonapartist tendencies. In the course of one conversation Sedov said that Trotsky in this respect even expressed the fear that if Tukhachevsky successfully accomplished a military coup, it was possible that he would not allow Trotsky into Moscow. . . . Trotsky therefore proposed that during the coup d'etat we should everywhere place our own people, people who would be faithful to Trotskyism and who could be relied upon as regards vigilance."

"The answer to Maidan comes from the South-East (Novorossiya) in the form of anti-fascist resistance and struggle for national liberation."

"Before his illness, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin loved being photographed with pygmies."

"Monkeys should be called monkeys."

"This time we must burn out all this Ukrainianism at the root. Together with their bastard literature, delusional history, cannibalisation of the “ancient Ukrainians”, fascist “aesthetics” and servility to the West. Burn them to death. No truce. Any ceasefire, and even more so an armistice, is certain death for our children and grandchildren."

"Mr. Rogozin is a charismatic orator with a rascally sense of humor, and he at times has succeeded in charming his rivals in Brussels even as he was upbraiding them. More than once in the interview, he ended long discourses in Russian about his views on relations with the West by uttering a single English word that captured how he likes to be viewed: “Troublemaker!”"

"…Russia’s envoy to NATO, Dmitri O. Rogozin, who is known as irascible and an outspoken nationalist and who once hung a poster of Stalin in his office in Brussels, was appointed a deputy prime minister overseeing the military-industrial complex."

"Upon US request, Romania has closed its airspace for my plane. Ukraine doesn't allow me to pass through again. Next time I'll fly on board TU-160."

"There is stud "Khrenovskoy" in my former constituency and that stud is older than all of the United States, older than America. Naturally, that's why we have archaic views."

"…They are countries that were formerly part of either the Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact. We call them NATO's Komsomol."

"Tremble, bourgeoisie! You're screwed. :)"

"If they were real men, following the tradition they would commit a hara-kiri and calm down at last. All they're doing is making noise"

"After analyzing the sanctions against our space industry, I suggest that the USA bring their astronauts to the International Space Station using a trampoline."

"Crimea is ours. Basta."

"If these are "peaceful protests" then Ashton is a ballerina at the Bolshoi Theatre."

"Every former w. who has aged wants to give lectures about morals, especially during tours and gigs abroad…"

"The whole criminal world is in Parliament!"

"This has never happened before, and now it's happaning again."

"Whatever organisation we try to create, it always ends up looking like the Communist Party."

"We wanted the best, but it turned out like always."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Only a fool would attack us."

"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"..."

"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."

"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."

"Stalin will be rehabilitated, needless to say."

"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."

"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."

"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."