{"quotes":[{"text":"Whenever the communists are under fire, it [the term 'red-baiter'] has served to divert attention from the subject matter to futile discussion of personal motives, the critic’s private life and other deliberate tricks of befuddlement.","author":"Eugene Lyons","tags":["communism","leftism","mccarthyism","soviet-union"],"id":1195,"author_id":"Eugene+Lyons"},{"text":"Every infantryman in the Soviet Army carries with him a small spade. When he is given the order to halt he immediately lies flat and starts to dig a hole in the ground beside him.","author":"Viktor Suvorov","tags":["military","soviet-union"],"id":3424,"author_id":"Viktor+Suvorov"},{"text":"This was the sickness of the age, the revolutionary madness of the epoch. In thought everyone was different from his words and outward show. No one had a clear conscience. Each with good reason could feel himself guilty, a secret criminal, an unexposed deceiver.","author":"Boris Pasternak","tags":["history","siberia","soviet-union"],"id":8156,"author_id":"Boris+Pasternak"},{"text":"I dispute the right of conservatives to be automatically complacent on these points. My own Marxist group took a consistently anti-Moscow line throughout the 'Cold War,' and was firm in its belief that that Soviet Union and its European empire could not last. Very few people believed that this was the case: The best known anti-Communist to advance the proposition was the great Robert Conquest, but he himself insists that part of the credit for such prescience goes to Orwell. More recently, a very exact prefiguration of the collapse of the USSR was offered by two German Marxists, one of them from the West (Hans Magnus Enzensberger) and one from the East (Rudolf Bahro, the accuracy of whose prediction was almost uncanny). I have never met an American conservative who has even heard of, let alone read, either of these authors.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["cold-war","communism","dissent","left-wing-politics","soviet-union","totalitarianism"],"id":15434,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"In actual fact our Russian experience—when I use the word 'Russian' I always differentiate it from the word 'Soviet'—I have in mind even pre-Soviet, pre-revolutinoary experience—in actual fact it is vitally important for the West, because by some chance of history we have trodden the same path seventy or eighty years before the West. And now it is with a strange sensation that we look at what is happening to you; many social phenomena that happened in Russia before its collapse are being repeated. Our experience of life is of vital importance to the West, but I am not convinced that you are capable of assimilating it without having gone through it to the end yourselves.You know, one could quote here many examples: for one, a certain retreat by the older generation, yielding their intellectual leadership to the younger generation. It is against the natural order of things for those who are youngest, with the least experience of life, to have the greatest influence in directing the life of society. One can say then that this is what forms the spirit of the age, the current of public opinion, when people in authority, well known professors and scientists, are reluctant to enter into an argument even when they hold a different opinion. It is considered embarrassing to put forward one's counterarguments, lest one become involved. And so there is a certain abdication of responsibility, which is typical here where there is complete freedom....There is now a universal adulation of revolutionaries, the more so the more extreme they are! Similarly, before the revolution, we had in Russia, if not a cult of terror, then a fierce defense of terrorists. People in good positions—intellectuals, professors, liberals—spent a great deal of effort, anger, and indignation in defending terrorists.","author":"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn","tags":["revolutionaries","russia","soviet-russia","soviet-union","terrorism","youth-leaders"],"id":16268,"author_id":"Aleksandr+Solzhenitsyn"},{"text":"Question: Which Mediterranean government shares all of Ronald Reagan's views on international terrorism, the present danger of Soviet advance, the hypocrisy of the United Nations, the unreliability of Europe, the perfidy of the Third World and the need for nuclear defense policy? Question: Which Mediterranean government is Ronald Reagan trying, with the help of George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger, to replace with a government led by a party which professes socialism and which contains extreme leftists?If you answered 'the government of Israel' to both of the above, you know more about political and international irony than the President does.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["1980s","caspar-weinberger","cold-war","europe","george-p-shultz","israel","israel-united-states-relations","leftism","mediterranean-sea","national-missile-defense","presidency-of-ronald-reagan","ronald-reagan","socialism","soviet-union","terrorism","third-world","united-nations","united-states"],"id":17800,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"An imaginary friend once asked me why Americans can't stand Russia. The answer was cold, deadly, silent, and, well expected. It’s because in Soviet Russia nothing happens anymore, because it doesn’t exist anymore. And Americans are all about happenings. If there isn’t one – they don’t go where it isn’t, because there isn’t anything to happen to them there.","author":"Will Advise","tags":["america","answer","answers","cold","deadly","death","expectation","expectations","expected","friend","happening","happenings","imaginary","imagination","imagined","kgb","nothing","nsa","question","questions","russia","silence","silent","soviet-russia","soviet-union","ussr"],"id":23787,"author_id":"Will+Advise"},{"text":"Only then, as she prepared to cross the avenue, did she again spot the man in the fedora hat. He was at the opposite side of the street from where he’d stood before, but the caramel color of his coat was unmistakable. He was loitering in front of what looked like a Ford V8 parked nose-up on the sidewalk. Florence adjusted her shawl over her shoulders and crossed to the opposite corner of the plaza. When she turned back to look again, he was gone.","author":"Sana Krasikov","tags":["20th-century-russia","america","based-on-a-true-story","based-on-real-events","brookyln","communism","doctor-zhivago","family","feminism","love-story","moscow","mother","motherhood","political-drama","politics","romance","soviet","soviet-literature","soviet-russia","soviet-union"],"id":25747,"author_id":"Sana+Krasikov"},{"text":"In the Soviet Union you weren’t allowed to speak out against the government. In the US you cannot speak out against sponsors.","author":"Kalle Lasn","tags":["advertising","commercial","consumerism","culture-jam","economics","environment","soviet-union","sponsors"],"id":28065,"author_id":"Kalle+Lasn"},{"text":"Florence could feel a constriction in her chest…She had been foolish enough to hope that whatever she was walking into would affect no one but herself. Now the truth was catching up with her at the speed of her galloping heartbeat…Now they had summoned her. And they knew everything.","author":"Sana Krasikov","tags":["20th-century-russia","america","based-on-a-true-story","based-on-real-events","brookyln","communism","doctor-zhivago","family","feminism","love-story","moscow","mother","motherhood","political-drama","politics","romance","soviet","soviet-literature","soviet-russia","soviet-union"],"id":41040,"author_id":"Sana+Krasikov"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":72,"pages":8,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}