Academics From Russia

"Well, we will indeed see how things develop and what will become of our art! In any case, artists should remain apolitical and only think of their work and dedicate all their energies to this work."

"Approaching it in one way, I see no essential difference between a line one calls 'abstract' and a 'fish'. But rather an essential likeness. This isolated line and the isolated fish alike are living beings with forces peculiar to them, though latent. They are forces of expression for these beings and of expression on human beings, because each has an impressive 'look' which manifests itself by its expression. But the voice of these latent forces is faint and limited. It is the environment of the line and the fish that brings about a miracle: the latent forces awaken, the expression becomes radiant.. .The environment is the composition. The composition is the organized sum of the interior functions (expressions) of every part of the work."

"Alors sempre avanti! (Ever Forward / Always Ahead)"

"The geometric line is an invisible thing. It is the track made by the moving point; that is, its product. It is created by movement – specifically through the destruction of the intense self-contained repose of the point. Here, the leap out of the static to the dynamic occurs. […] The forces coming from without which transform the point into a line, can be very diverse. The variation in lines depends upon the number of these forces and upon their combinations."

"Each spiritual age expresses its special character in a form which corresponds exactly to its character. Each age in this way characterizes its true 'physiognomy', full of expression and strength. Thus in all spiritual areas 'yesterday' is transformed into 'today'. But apart from this, art possesses a further quality which it alone possesses: that quality which enables one to divine the 'tomorrow' today – a strength which is both creative and prophetic."

"At the Bauhaus, Klee exuded a healthy, generative atmosphere – as a great artist and as a lucid, pure human being."

"..[quote of Newman, on making his work 'Onement', in 1948]..from then on I had to give up any relation to nature.. .That doesn't mean that I think my things are mathematical or removed from life. By 'nature' I mean something very specific. I think that some abstractions - for example Kandinsky's - are really nature paintings. The triangles and the spheres or circles could be bottles. They could be trees, or buildings. I think that in 'Euclydean Abyss' and 'Onement' I removed myself from nature. But I did not remove myself from life."

"I would love to paint a large landscape of Moscow — taking elements from everywhere and combining them into a single picture—weak and strong parts, mixing everything together in the same way as the world is mixed of different elements. It must be like an orchestra.. .Suddenly I felt that my old dream was closer to coming true. You know that I dreamed of painting a big picture expressing joy, the happiness of life and the universe. Suddenly I feel the harmony of colors and forms that come from this world of joy."

"Gorbachev was a politician and statesman who had a huge impact on the course of world history."

"Gorbachev was a leader whose rule brought "absolute sadness, misfortune and problems" for "all the peoples of our country"."

"[On trying to preserve glasnost (openness and transparency)] Years later, Gorbachev wanted to preserve this part of his legacy. In 2008, in coöperation with the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Gorbachev formed a working group to try to create a museum of Stalinist terror. As General Secretary, he said, he had received full access to the archives. This was when he had learned that terror had been truly random, that people had been arrested and executed not for any wrongdoing, nor on suspicion of wrongdoing, nor even on specious accusation of wrongdoing, but simply because every local law-enforcement entity had to fill its quota of arrests and executions. He had also learned that at the height of the terror, when thousands of people were executed every day, Soviet leaders had signed off on these executions by the page—with dozens of names per page. Gorbachev, who had created a commission that ultimately reviewed millions of cases from the Stalin era and repealed hundreds of thousands of guilty verdicts, seemed to shudder in disbelief as he talked about the things he had learned. Here was another quality that set him apart from any Soviet leader before him: he could be shaken."

"[I]t soon became clear that the museum Gorbachev wanted to build could not exist in Vladimir Putin's Russia."

"The promises given to President Mikhail Gorbachev by President George H. W. Bush, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, President Francois Mitterand, Chancellor Helmuth Kohl and their foreign ministers in 1990—not to expand NATO eastward; not to extend membership in the NATO alliance to former member states of the Warsaw Pact—were ignored... In the 1990s, the Russian threat was nonexistent and there was no reason to suppose it would return. In addition, President Clinton and the Senators who were nominally in charge of overseeing the conduct of U.S. Foreign and Security Policy were mesmerized by the prospects of being on the right side of history and campaign donations. Given the voracious appetite for cash in Congress the defense industriess were clearly interested in NATO expansion and found ways to advocate for it. Weapons sales to East European nations invited to join NATO promised huge profits. Bruce Jackson, a Lockheed vice president from 1993–2002, rushed to set up the Committee to Expand NATO and reportedly used contributions from defense companies to lobby Congress for NATO expansion."

"The wall had come down...Germany was reunifying. The question became ‘where would a united Germany be?’ The West wanted Germany in NATO. For Gorbachev, this was an impossible sell. Twenty-seven point five million Soviet citizens had died in the war against Germany in the Second World War on the eastern front. Contrary to the bunk we’re told, the United States didn’t land on Normandy and defeat Nazi Germany. The defeat of Nazi Germany was done primarily by the Soviet army."

"How could Gorbachev go home and say, ‘Germany is reunited. Great. And it’s going to be in NATO.’ It was impossible. They told Gorbachev, ‘We promise if you agree to a reunited Germany in NATO, NATO will not move—this was Secretary of State James Baker—one inch to the east. In other words, NATO would not move from Germany toward Russia. And it did... As we speak today, NATO is on Russia’s borders,' Every Western leader promised Gorbachev NATO would not move eastward.”"

"The crucial question...what is NATO for? ...From the beginning.. we had drilled into our heads that the purpose of NATO was to defend us from the Russian hordes... OK, 1991, no more Russian hordes. There were negotiations, between George Bush, the first; James Baker, secretary of state; Mikhail Gorbachev; Genscher and Kohl, the Germans, on how to deal... after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev... agreed to allow Germany, now unified, to join NATO... There was a quid pro quo, namely that... NATO means basically U.S. forces—not expand to East Berlin, to East Germany... the phrase that was used was “not one inch to the east.” NATO immediately moved to East Germany. Under Clinton, other countries, former Russian satellites, were introduced into NATO. Finally, NATO went so far, as I mentioned before... to suggest that even Ukraine, right at the heartland of Russian strategic concerns...join NATO. So, what’s NATO doing altogether? Well, actually, its mission was changed. The official mission of NATO was changed to become to be—to control and safeguard the global energy system, sea lanes, pipelines and so on. And, of course, on the side, it’s acting as a intervention force for the United States. Is that a legitimate reason for us to maintain NATO, to be an instrument for U.S. global domination? I think that’s a rather serious question. That’s not the question that’s asked."

"Gorbachev's most impressive moment was still to come. On December 7, 1988, in his address to the UN general assembly, he declared the end of the Cold War, renouncing not only the 1945 Yalta settlement but also the ideological struggle between the Soviet Union and the West since November 1917. According to the Soviet leader, the Bolshevik revolution had entered the realm of history, and class conflict would no longer dominate global politics. "We are entering an era in which progress will be based on the common interests of the whole of mankind... The common values of humanity must be the determining priority in international politics, [requiring] the freeing of international relations from ideology." Gorbachev also repudiated the Brezhnev doctrine: "Force or the threat of force neither can nor should be the instruments of foreign policy... To deny a nation freedom of choice, regardless of the pretext or the verbal guise in which it is cloaked, is to upset the unstable balance that has been achieved... Freedom of choice is a universal principal, which knows no exception." Gorbachev's third point was to pronounce a new reality in the arms race: given the unlikelihood of a Superpower conflict, the principle of stockpiling arms was to be replaced with one of "reasonable sufficiency." To make this clear, he announced a unilateral cut of five hundred thousand men from the Soviet army and a withdrawal of fifty thousand soldiers and five thousand tanks from the Soviet forces in Eastern Europe, and he proposed negotiations on even greater reductions. One day later, during his private New York meeting with the outgoing Reagan and the new US president George H.W. Bush, Gorbachev pressed for rapid progress in arms control leading to the complete abolition of nuclear weapons."

"Thus within three years the former Andropov protege had totally transformed Soviet foreign policy, replacing its messianic Marxist creed with a radical internationalism. Among the strongest reactions was the New York Times, whose December 8 editorial stated: "Perhaps not since Woodrow Wilson presented his Fourteen Points in 1918 or since Franklin Roosevelt has a world figure demonstrated the vision Mikhail Gorbachev displayed yesterday at the United Nations." A number of scholars believe that the Cold War ended in December 1988 with neither a winner nor a loser. According to this view, one of the Superpowers simply called off the ideological rivalry that had begun in 1917, withdrew from the post-1945 arms race, and relinquished control over regimes dependent on Soviet force and economic subsidies for their survival. Although not everyone agrees, it is certainly reasonable to assert that without Gorbachev's bold international agenda the world may well have remained divided into two armed camps, and the events that followed would have had entirely different outcomes."

"The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has warned that current tension between Russia and the West is putting the world in "colossal danger" due to the threat from nuclear weapons. In an interview with the BBC's Steve Rosenberg, former President Gorbachev called for all countries to declare that nuclear weapons should be destroyed."

"The story goes back more than three decades to the fall of the Berlin Wall and eventual re-unification of Germany. At the time, the Soviet Union had some 380,000 troops in what was then the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany. Those forces were there as part of the treaty ending World War II, and the Soviets were concerned that removing them could end up threatening the USSR’s borders. The Russians have been invaded — at terrible cost — three times in a little more than a century. So in the early 1990s, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev cut a deal. The Soviets agreed to withdraw troops from Eastern Europe as long as NATO didn’t fill the vacuum, or recruit members of the Soviet-dominated Warsaw Pact. Baker promised Gorbachev that NATO would not move “one inch east.” The agreement... was followed in practice. NATO stayed west of the Oder and Neisse rivers separating Germany and Poland, and Soviet troops returned to Russia... But President Bill Clinton blew that all up in 1999, when the U.S. and NATO intervened in the civil war between Serbs and Albanians over the Serbian province of Kosovo. Behind the new American doctrine of “responsibility to protect,” NATO opened a massive 11-week bombing campaign against Serbia... From Moscow’s point of view, the war was unnecessary. The Serbs were willing to withdraw their troops and restore Kosovo’s autonomous status. But NATO demanded a large occupation force that would be immune from Serbian law, something the nationalist-minded Serbs would never agree to. It was virtually the same provocative language the Austrian-Hungarian Empire had presented to the Serbs in 1914, language that set off World War I... But NATO didn’t stop there..."

"We had 10 years after the Cold War to build a new world order and yet we squandered them. The United States cannot tolerate anyone acting independently. Every US president has to have a war."

"You have to consider that Reagan was twenty years older than I was. He was the age of my mother. So there was a generation gap. During one of our talks, he tried to lecture me and moralize. I said to him, "Mr. President, you are not my teacher, and I am not your student. You are not a prosecutor, and I am not a defendant. So let's not subject each other to lectures. Let's talk frankly and address the issues. If you want to lecture, we might as well wrap it up, because there's really nothing to talk about." He got a little upset. Not long after that, he said, "Why don't we go on a first-name basis? You call me Ron and I'll call you Mikhail." That was an important step."

"Gorbachev faced a wary Western audience, which he had hoped to woo with vows to end the arms race. Before taking office, during his December 1984 visit to Britain, he had referred to Europe as "a common home... and not a theater of military operations" and had convinced Thatcher that he was a man with whom the West could "do business." But the Reagan administration, facing unexpectedly strong congressional opposition to its military budget, was unreceptive to the new leader's message and intensified its charges of the Soviets' untrustworthiness and deplorable human rights record. Nonetheless, in a private message Reagan expressed interest in a summit meeting and assured Gorbachev of his hope to resume the search for "mutual understanding and peaceful development." The US and Soviet leaders met in Geneva in November 1985. At this first Superpower summit in six years, no treaty was signed, but the two-day meeting gave Reagan and Gorbachev an opportunity to evaluate each other and air their differences. Although they jointly declared that "a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought" and agreed to accelerate work on nuclear arms control, Reagan defended SDI and Gorbachev refused to expand the agenda to include Afghanistan and human rights."

"Q: You recently said, not referring to socialism in general but to the USSR in particular, that socialism had been assassinated, stabbed in the back. In this conspiracy of daggers that killed socialism, would you say Gorbachev was one of the assassins? A: No, I could not say that about Gorbachev because I have another view of Gorbachev and it is not one of an assassin who plotted the USSR's destruction. The USSR self-destructed in an incredible way. The responsibility for that self-destruction undoubtedly lies in the hands of the country's leaders, those who led that nation. Now, some of them were aware they were destroying it and others were not. That is what I was trying to say, more or less, and we saw it all from the beginning. I cannot say Gorbachev played a role in which he was aware of the destruction of the USSR because I have no doubt that Gorbachev intended to fight to improve socialism."

"Refusing to abandon his peace offensive, Gorbachev produced more surprises. Intent on rehabilitating the Soviet Union's reputation in world public opinion, he initiated major breakthroughs in human rights, beginning with the February 1986 freeing of the famed Jewish political prisoner Natan Sharansky. On December 19, 1986, Gorbachev personally phoned the dissident Andrei Sakharov to inform him of his release from his Gorki exile. One month later the Soviets ceased jamming the BBC, the Voice of America, and West Germany's Deutsche Welle broadcasts and lifted the censorship of banned books, such as Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago. The KGB reduced the number of arrests for political crimes, and the government released almost all political dissidents and allowed greater religious freedom and freedom of expression. In 1987 the number of Jews granted exit visas rose to almost eight thousand from fewer than one thousand the year before. Still, Reagan was skeptical over the Soviet leader and hammered away at the "evil empire." During his June 1987 visit to celebrate Berlin's 750th anniversary, the president, standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate, urged Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" that surrounded West Berlin. Both leaders continued to express support for arms control, but it was Gorbachev, by suspending his objections to SDI and removing strategic-weapon reductions from the negotiations, who made a breakthrough treaty on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) possible. In 1981 Reagan had overridden NATO's Double-Track Decision by proposing the "zero option" (removing all missiles from Europe) which Moscow, predictably, had refused. The talks, suspended by Andropov in 1983, now resumed."

"I began to feel the desire for something more; I wanted to do something to make things better."

"If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven't done much today."

"With Yeltsin, the Soviet Union broke apart, the country was totally mismanaged, the constitution was not respected by the regions of Russia. The army, education and health systems collapsed. People in the West quietly applauded, dancing with and around Yeltsin. I conclude therefore that we should not pay too much attention to what the West is saying."

"Preservation, renewal, and reform of the Union was my main political and, if you will, moral task in my position as president of the USSR. I consider it my greatest sorrow and misfortune that I did not succeed in preserving the country as a single whole. All my efforts were focused on trying to preserve that unity. Incidentally, more and more statements are heard today, including some by participants in the Belovezh accord, that the "soft form of Union Gorbachev proposed" might have protected our nations and nationalities from painful experiences. But, as the saying goes, the train has already left the station."

"The aims and ideals of the Soviet revolution inspired the patriotic enthusiasm of millions of people in the 1930s, during World War II, and in the postwar reconstruction period. This explains the Soviet Union's great leap forward, the achievement of a high level of industrial capacity in a very short time, the transformation of the Soviet Union into a major power in terms of science and culture. The historic victory in the Great Patriotic War against Nazism, which was a surprise not only for Hitler but also for the Western democracies is also explained by what we have said above. All this is true. But the historical truth is also that the regime and the system abused the faith of the people in these high ideals, turning them to its own advantage. Rule by the people, equality, justice, and the promise of a happy future — all these ideas were utilized for the sake of maintaining and strengthening totalitarianism."

"The reforms of the perestroika era were aimed at a qualitative renewal of society and at overcoming the totalitarian structure blocking the road to democracy. Fundamental reforms were begun under very complex conditions, but they were cut short by the August coup attempt and the Belovezh agreement that dissolved the Soviet Union."

"The Soviet Union could have been preserved and should have been preserved. ... I wanted to decentralize the Soviet Union and give the maximum amount of rights to the republics as guaranteed under the constitution, while preserving in the center the most important functions such as defense, diplomacy, coordination."

"The dissolution of the Union radically changed the situation in Europe and the world, disrupted the geopolitical balance, and undermined the possibility of carrying further many positive processes that were under way in world politics by the end of 1991. I am convinced that the world today would be living more peacefully if the Soviet Union - of course in a renewed and reformed version - had continued to exist."

"As I look back to the events of December 1991, each time I come to the conclusion that I had no right to act differently. To act counter to the decisions made by eleven republics, whose Supreme Soviets approved the Minsk agreement, would have meant to unleash a bloody slaughter, which might have developed into a global catastrophe."

"Perestroika did not give the people prosperity, something they expected of me, as head of state, based on an ingrained, traditional feeling of dependence. But I did not promise that. I urged people to use this new-found freedom to create prosperity, personal and social prosperity, with their own hands and minds, according to the abilities of each."

"In the end, the “model” that came into existence in the USSR was not socialist but totalitarian. This is a serious matter to be reflected on by all who seriously aspire to progress for the benefit of the human race."

"Political blindness and a narrow-minded vision, fanned by mercenary self-interest, had provoked the actions of the [August Coup] conspirators. The separatists and extreme radicals now possessed the most devastating argument in favour of the break-up of the Union. The leaders of the coup had dislodged the stone that started a landslide."

"I find it difficult to say whether the leadership's 'second echelon' could have preserved the German Democratic Republic. Helmut Kohl later told me he had never believed that Egon Krenz was capable of getting the situation under control. I do not know - we are all wiser after the event, as the saying goes. For my part, I must admit I briefly had a faint hope that the new leaders would be able to change the course of events by establishing a new type of relations between the two German states - based on radical domestic reforms in East Germany."

"To demonize all Soviet "leaders" at all levels, to portray them as unqualified villains and evildoers, unprincipled self-seeking scoundrels who were indifferent to the interests and needs of the people — that is a shallow and frivolous approach. Of course there were villains, quite a few of them. But most of those who came to power had the intention of serving the "toiling masses" from which they themselves had come. That the system rendered their aspirations useless, reduced their efforts to nothing, and ultimately snuffed out their finer impulses — that is a separate question."

"A German-Russian partnership is a key element in any serious pan-European integration process. It is my ardent wish that Russia and Germany may manage to preserve all the positive achievements of the late 1980s and early 1990s in today's difficult times."

"Initially, we were under illusions that we could make the system work. But as early as the fall of 1986, all of us had to start shedding those illusions. We had talked of perestroika (restructuring) but nothing was changing. ... But change was not easy. Even new politicians resisted change because they were used to central planning. By 1988 we decided we needed political reform: free elections, the separation of powers, a multiparty system, recognition of market economics as a necessary tool to modernize our society and to create incentives within the economic system."

"I absolutely reject the accusation that the Soviet leadership intentionally held back the truth about Chernobyl. We simply did not know the whole truth yet."

"The reform of our enormous state indeed demanded decentralization and redistribution of powers between the centre and the regions. But the local elites tried to paint this need in the exaggerated colours of 'national survival'. It worked!"

"The Baltic republics, because of their history and other characteristics, could enjoy special status in the Union. However, the 'sovereignization' of Russia scuttled the search for a new formula for relations with the Baltic republics in a reformed Union. It caused a chain reaction, during which analogous enactments were passed by all of the Union republics and later autonomous republics. A 'parade of sovereignties' had begun. The only means of preventing the collapse of the Union was the preparation without delay of a new Union Treaty."

"The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station was graphic evidence, not only of how obsolete our technology was, but also of the failure of the old system. At the same time, and such is the irony of history, it severely affected our reforms by literally knocking the country off its tracks."

"We're now living in a new world. And end has been put to the cold war and to the arms race, as well as to the mad militarization of the country, which has crippled our economy, public attitudes and morals. The threat of nuclear war has been removed."

"I consider it vitally important to preserve the democratic achievements which have been attained in the last few years. We have paid with all our history and tragic experience for these democratic achievements, and they are not to be abandoned, whatever the circumstances, and whatever the pretexts. Otherwise, all our hopes for the best will be buried."

"On taking office as General Secretary in 1985 I was immediately faced with an avalanche of problems. It was vital to change our relationship with the West, particularly the United States, and to bring the costly and dangerous arms race to an end. We needed to withdraw from the damaging and costly war in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union faced tremendous internal problems. The process of reform required new leadership and courage. Long-term problems needed to be addressed as soon as possible."

"The Supreme Soviets of the Republics rejected the Treaty on the Union of Sovereign States, drafted by the USSR State Council under the guidance of the country's President, and swallowed the poisoned fruit of the Belovezh scheme instead. The intelligentsia remained silent. The media were thrown into disarray. My appeals to the deputies of the Supreme Soviet and to the people, my warning that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was fraught with dire consequences, went unheeded - society was bewildered and unable to appraise the crisis. Destructive forces in the country exploited the confusion, usurping the people's right to decide their own future. It was what I had feared most of all."

"I view the award of the Nobel Prize to me as an expression of understanding of my intentions, my aspirations, the objectives of the profound transformation we have begun in our country, and the ideas of new thinking. I see it as your acknowledgment of my commitment to peaceful means of implementing the objectives of perestroika."