military-leaders-from-the-soviet-union

"Bobkov worked for 45 years in the Soviet organs, eventually heading the fifth chief directorate (1969 to 1983) which was responsible for maintaining the ideological correctness of the population and suppressing dissent including the use of forced psychiatric incarceration and becoming the first deputy chairman of the KGB of the USSR."

"There is not a single misanthropic ideology in the world, even in theory, acting more cruelly and cynically than Russism ... There are no moral principles - they are all like animals. I don't want this war to stop. I need this war, its continuation. This war will go to the territory of Russia - whether Russia wants it or not ... And the Western countries, the world community will not let it stop, in order to completely isolate Russia and destroy it as a state, so that this predatory beast on earth no longer exists."

"Freedom and independence are life or death for us. Because it would be possible to live with people, among people, with a neighbor, in a state where some of your rights are protected. Where the state fulfills its duty to you. It doesn't. Russia does not fulfill any obligations to the people, to the state. So, they simply offer us: They put a wild bear, caught in a forest, in a cage and say : "Go into the cage and live with him, be friends. Give him a paw. Live with this beast and play nice." That's what Russia is."

"Russia gathers all kinds of criminal gangs [in Russia]. They're given the nickname "opposition". They arm them heavily, pay them big money. Countless funds are spent on this. It's unthinkable to a normal person's imagination. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, planes, Grads, Smerches, Uragans. Their training happens outside the republic, on Russian territory, at special bases. Russian military specialists, Russian special services. Plus a few criminals of Chechen ethnicity – and they call this whole mixture "opposition". Opposition in the Russian way. In fact, Russism. Typical Russism. Worse than fascism, Nazism, racism, all individual-hating ideologies. Raised to the rank of Russian state policy. Russism is worse than fascism. Throughout the history of Russia, it chooses the most helpless victim. To a complete physical destruction, and realistic intimidation of the world – saying: "here is how strong, powerful we are, what we can do, how insidious, evil, predatory." Nagorno-Karabakh – isolated and completely destroyed. It's the training. They went further: Abkhazia - isolated from the Caucasus, from Georgia. Destroyed all potential. War with Georgia. Armenia with Azerbaijan – in fact [the conflict involves] Russian special services, Russian troops, Russian weapons, Russian equipment. South Ossetia - isolated, destroyed. North Ossetia, Ingushetia – isolated. And the physical destruction of entire nations. Violence, death, blood. Destruction of nation's potential. The Russian leadership, throughout its history, when it got difficult, fled to sign agreements that it has never respected and will never respect, and does not think [of respecting]. As soon as it gets stronger, it starts again. It isolates the weakest and tortures them. That's what Russia is – empire of evil. As it was, is, and remains. Its rapacity... greed, ruthlessness, lack of spirituality, immorality it has demonstrated in Chechnya. 250 000 armed forces. 5600 units of armored vehicles on the territory. An unheard number in history against [a handful of] mountain people. Against a territory for which you need a microscope to look for it on a map. They reassured the world community, they made a statement from the Russian President that there will be no forceful solution. There will be only a peaceful solution [they said]. And when on the New Year's Eve... on the New Year's Eve, they mixed sand, earth, sky, human blood and flesh. Mixed and made a bloody mess. And they are not going to move from this policy, they are not going to move from it. That's what Russia is. If the world, I declare responsibly, if the whole world does not stop this plague, or do not – at least – make it follow rule of law (there will never be democracy, and never was) If – at least in legal terms – they do not comply with the norms of international law, the world will be subject to severe shock."

"Russism is a special form of misanthropic ideology based on great-power chauvinism, complete lack of spirituality, and immorality. It differs from the well-known forms of fascism, racism, nationalism, in its particular cruelty, both to man and to nature ... Possessing a slave psychology, it parasitizes using false history, on occupied territories and oppressed peoples."

"Staying with the covering units, Petrovsky fearlessly led them into battle. He was a man of great willpower and great energy. He was always seen in the most decisive places."

"I don't know a braver soldier than General Plaskov."

"A 72-year-old Radkevich, a former tsarist general, left a fond memories. A cheerful, humorous old man, he often often came [to class] by bicycle with a bag full of groceries"

"Look, Sema, just look! Jew Grigory Plaskov beats Hitler, beats this bitch right on the head! Beat, beat him, lads! Beat for Babi Yar, for the torment of our people! Fire, more fire, more fire! Indeed, a symbolic episode..."

"Look Semyon, look Krivoshein, how my gunners, the first on the entire front, the first in this war, open fire on damned Berlin!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"These are not people with whom we can hold talks. Maskhadov does not control the situation and, more importantly, he’s a terrorist. No country in the world is willing to deal with terrorists."

"If you continue to stand idly by while my people vanish in a bloodbath, if you fail to act with conviction and resolve as you did in Rwanda, Chechen ghosts will stain your honour as surely as they do Russia’s. May God grant you the wisdom and vision to serve the cause of peace and justice."

"As a politician, he was extremely weak, extremely distrustful, very dependent on the intrigues of people surrounding him."

"Like most Chechens of his generation, Maskhadov was born in exile in Kazakhstan, where Chechens had been deported en masse in 1944 under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The exile added fuel to Chechens’ resentment of Russians."

"The savagery we must bear is not new. We remember Stalin’s salt mines, his guard towers, barbed wire and unmarked graves. The pain of exodus and genocide we have known before. So we recognise the others with whom we share a terrible kinship of horror. The skeletal Jews and Romani in the ovens of Dachau and Auschwitz. The bayonet fodder of Nanjing. The ancient, wide-eyed children of Biafra. The pleading mother and baby facing the rifles at My Lai. The marsh Arabs of Iraq choked by the clouds of mustard gas. The Tutsi of Rwanda butchered on the Kigali road by the knives of the Interahamwe. They are all our martyred brothers and sisters in the legacy of senseless murder. Only our slaughter, our death is not yesterday’s, it belongs in the living nightmare of the present. How many Chechens will have died in the time you take to read this letter?"

"Beyond the confines of my tiny country, my words seem to count for little, just as the anguished cry of my people still astonishingly leaves you mute and deaf. So I will continue to write until the silence is pierced."

"You will soon gather in Genoa amidst the splendor and ceremony that befits your place in the front rank of nations. Guards of honour will salute you, you will meet in palaces and the world will listen to your every word. But I write you from a killing ground putrid with slaughter and like my brethren I remain a hunted man in my own country. I too won the privilege and responsibility of leading my nation from the ballot box, but Moscow calls me a bandit, a terrorist and a criminal."

"You will join in your summit to consider debt relief for the impoverished developing world. This is a laudable aim, and it is the hope no doubt of countless millions that humanitarian concern motivates the strong to seek an end to indentured misery for the weak. But if you acknowledge the quiet violence of poverty upon the destitute and the hungry why do you turn away from us? We who die in the flames of the Kremlin’s dirty war, are we less worthy of compassion? What has made us invisible to you? I fear I know the answer. I fear the cold exigencies of realpolitik ensure your inaction and seal our fate. Lest you damage an uncertain relationship with a fragile and volatile new Russia, you are willing to overlook the annihilation of my people. In your eyes, for the sake of larger interests we are an expendable nation."

"If reason triumphs among our Kremlin opponents, we can end this war at the negotiating table. If not, then most likely blood will be spilled for a long time to come but we will not be morally responsible for the continuation of this madness."

"I, Aslan Maskhadov, the democratically elected President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, write this desperate appeal in the name of my people, the victims of a genocidal war whose daily murder has yet to awaken the conscience of the world you lead. We are as wretched, bloody and enslaved as you are rich, mighty and free."

"Out of a population that once numbered a million, one in seven Chechens is now dead. 250,000 of our civilians are refugees. Bereft of the most basic necessities, many are ravaged by disease and malnutrition, especially the elderly and the young. More than 20,000 civilians and resistance members endure imprisonment in the new Gulags, the so-called filtration camps. Held in dehumanizingly foul and primitive conditions with little or no medical care that far exceed the worst standards of the Russian penal system, life in the improvised camps sees the sadistic and systematic use of torture. Burning with cigarettes, crippling beatings, suffocation, drowning in human excrement, mutilation with knives, high voltage electric shock and sexual abuses are only some of the common practices. Many prisoners are ultimately killed. Surely for some this must be a welcome deliverance from hell."

"In 1945 you defeated the evils of militarism, fascism and Nazism. Those nations among you that had given birth to the monstrous juggernaut and holocaust of world war, vowed never to repeat the same fatal errors and forged yourselves in a new spirit to stand proudly among the elder democracies."

"We are going through hard times now. The enemy is within us but it is invisible. We are one nation, we have one religion but there is no accord between us."

"Don't expect anything good from the puppets and enemies. The day will soon come when the occupation forces will leave Chechnya."

"What reliable information can a traitor who has only completed two years of high-school education provide?"

"Chechen mujahedin will resist to the end in this struggle, and the flame of this conflagration will spread to the entire North Caucasus."

"We are well-prepared for this summer and autumn. And in view of the mood among our fighters, I can tell you that the situation will undergo a radical change. After the referendum, the activities of the resistance units sharply increased."

"The people of Russia will experience constant fear of possible retribution by suicide bombers in revenge for the evil deeds of the [Federal Security Service] and the federal forces in Chechnya."

"There was also the religious factor. As a military man I knew the capacity of the Russian army. When a Russian column was advancing and you had no proper ammunitions left and you were waiting for them to move 200 or 300 meters to destroy them and you succeeded – these were miracles. That was when the religious factor came into play. You began to believe that the outcome was in the hands of God."

"I will not call for talks with the Russian leadership any more because it's senseless."