“My 'morals' were sound, even a bit puritanic, but when a hidebound old deacon inveighed against dancing I rebelled. By the time of graduation I was still a 'believer' in orthodox religion, but had strong questions which were encouraged at Harvard. In Germany I became a freethinker and when I came to teach at an orthodox Methodist Negro school I was soon regarded with suspicion, especially when I refused to lead the students in public prayer. When I became head of a department at Atlanta, the engagement was held up because again I balked at leading in prayer. I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war. I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century

“I offered them Utopia, but they fought for the right to live in Hell.”
― Mark Millar, Superman: Red Son

“There is no word that admits of more various significations, and has made more varied impressions on the human mind, than that of liberty.” (Montesquieu) In order to exist, liberty and justice in a society, there should be equality in this society before them and together with them. Only then can we speak of humanism. Only socially equal personalities are free. And only free and equal in rights personalities could “love each other like brothers.”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“Like a gloomy and sinister paradox since its apparition until now, socialism suffered terrible and terrifying metamorphoses. With the name of the most human doctrine—Socialism—the most ominous and naughty crimes against humanity were done. The National Socialism of Hitler created Auschwitz and Majdanek and the People’s socialism of Stalin — Gulag and Kolima! And both of them buried more than fifty million people! That’s monstrous!”
― Todor Bombov, Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face

“It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.'

All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was:

There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man!

Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Truth and justice are commonly found in the personality of the paranoid delusional”
― Russian, Unknown

“Revolutionary Marxism sees in fascism a militant self-defense movement for the structure and interests of the capitalist system, directing the movements of the petit-bourgeois masses with pseudo-ideologies formed for the purpose of its own preservation.”
― Karl Otto Paetel, The National Bolshevist Manifesto

“The Ogre does what Ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man.
But one prize is beyond his reach,
The Ogre cannot master Speech:
About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.”
― W.H. Auden

“The final giveaway is the presence of ordinary criminal types within the leadership of the Communist Party and its revolutionary cadre. Here we find the sadists, the robbers, the killers, and the misfits. Revolution is alluring to them, because it gives them permission to do their thing under cover of an ideal. As Sam Vaknin has pointed out, “The suppression of envy is at the core of the narcissist’s being. If he fails to convince his self that he is the only good object in the universe, he is bound to be exposed to his own murderous envy. If there are others out there who are better than him, he envies them, he lashes out at them ferociously, uncontrollably, madly, hatefully, he tries to eliminate them.
J.R.Nyquist”
― J.R. Nyquist

“Международная программа Россіи и международная программа Совѣтовъ прямо противоположны. И потому патріотически солидаризоваться съ одержимыми коммунистами — безумно и безотвѣтственно. Всѣ ихъ планы, затѣи и войны ничего Россіи не принесутъ, кромѣ крови, муки, вымиранія, униженій, разоренія, всеобщей ненависти и всеобщей мести. Они не только не возвеличатъ и не обогатятъ Россію, но могутъ привести къ ея раздѣленію и распаденію, къ утратѣ ею ея исконныхъ, исторически и государственно безспорныхъ вотчинъ.”
― Иван Ильин, Советский Союз - не Россия

“Six out of eight members of the first politburo of the Bolshevik Party created in November 1917 – Lev Kamenev, Nikolay Krestinsky, Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Andrei Bubnov, and Grigori Sokolnikov – were killed by Stalin between 1936 and 1941; only Lenin and Stalin himself died natural deaths.”
― Enzo Traverso, Revolution: An Intellectual History

“Without an intellectual and emotional shift among both the American public and policymakers, the Unite States will not be in a good position to promote American values... and gain access to what is surely the largest new market and source of raw materials to open to the West in this generation"

Goble, Paul A. "Forget the Soviet Union." Foregn Policy 86 (1992): 56”
― Goble, Paul

“bourgeois scientists found it necessary to invent the intraspecific struggle. They say that a fierce struggle for food, of which there is an insufficiency, goes on in nature, within the species, among its individual members – a struggle for the conditions of life. The stronger, fitter individuals win. The same thing, they aver, goes on among human beings: the capitalists, you see, are brainier, are more capable by nature and heredity. We Soviet people know full well that the oppression of the working people, the domination of the capitalist class and imperialist war have nothing in common with the laws of biology. These phenomena are all governed by the laws of decaying bourgeois, capitalist society, which has outlived its day. Nor is there any intraspecific competition in nature itself.”
― Trofim Lysenko, Agro Biology

“What they didn't understand was that the Soviet Union wasn't communism, certainly not as Marx envisioned it. Instead, it was best understood as the most extractive sort of capitalism in which all profits belonged to the state.”
― Deborah Cohen, Last Call at the Hotel Imperial: The Reporters Who Took On a World at War

“Volgens velen past Lenin als oproerkraaier, als atheïstische omvergooier van de macht, niet langer in het patriottische neo-imperalistische, Russisch-orthodoxe narratief; zijn zijn dagen als gebalsemd lijk in het mausoleum geteld.”
― Pieter Waterdrinker, Tsjaikovskistraat 40: Een autobiografische vertelling uit Rusland

“В ідеологічних текстах теж ніхто не приховував, що російська мова таки рівніша. Мовляв, те, що всі мови в Союзі начебто рівноправні, не означає, що вони виконують однаковий об'єм суспільних функцій, бо ж у деяких і писемність не так давно з'явилася, та й, правду кажучи, російська накопичила надто великі багатства, аби її вважати рівноцінною з іншими. Тому мови СРСР «взаємозбагачуються». Був, правда, один незручний момент — цей «благотворний» взаємовплив виглядав як цілком односторонній процес. Російська відвойовувала собі простір, забираючи його у національних мов. Цей процес мило називався «взаємодопомогою» та навіть «розподілом праці». Дуже дбали, аби національні мови не перетрудились.”
― Євгенія Кузнєцова, Мова-меч. Як говорила радянська імперія

“In the carriages of the past, you can't go anywhere.”
― Maxim Gorky

“Russia is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”
― Sir Winston Churchill

“He was awake; it seemed like a long time, all dressed, sitting deep in the armchair, small with a grey face. I stopped ast the room entrance in silence, swallowed my words, and thought that maybe he didn’t even go to sleep that night. His facial colour reminded me of a teacher, dying from cancer.
‘Grandpa, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with you? Mother is coming home, did you hear?’ I came closer and touched his hand. It was colder than usual, and the frost went down my back. ‘Do you hear me? What’s wrong with you?’ I asked, and he was silent.
Suddenly, I understood everything.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 5: University of Life)


“‘Let me tell you this way. In the academy, we were told to marry early, before we go on the first shift. My first shift starts in a few months in July. I shall be half a year under the water in the submarine, carrying nuclear weapons. They advise us to marry and to make children as soon as possible because who knows what will be on that shift. Also, I told you about the radiation. I know submariners’ who cannot make children because of the radiation on the ship,’ said Prohor.
‘How to explain to you, my girl? To make children, a man needs an erection but the radiation kills it. I am afraid until I reach the rank of admiral, I shall be impotent … unable to make children …,’ Prohor told sadly from his bed.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 6: Fiance from Submarine)


“So, it happened there; between the two biggest islands of two big enemies, Japan and the USSR.
‘Now I recall that Prohor praised that they can attack unexpectedly from a submarine, from under the water, with nuclear rockets.’ I was astonished that I knew all these things, which earlier had never interested me.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 7: Between Two Men)


“‘Do you remember what I told you before I died? You promised me to think big! My little star, if you think big, you will become big! Use my diamonds and the wall clock to become big! Dream big, Anfisa—and you will be more than just a wife to a man.
‘But remember, you have to take diamonds and the clock outside the USSR, where they value these things.’ I heard my grandfather’s voice live, close, but I didn’t see him.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 8: Earner Marriage No. 1)”
― Angelika Regossi

“I was one to one with a big nurse. Afraid to move and ask,
‘Whose blood is it so cold?’ … drop by drop … inside my small body.
But the blood from the looks of these opposite men was not cold. It was hot, even very hot, pumping into my head. One man, another, and one more, some older than others, some even with temples of grey hair. But what united them all was the interest in a ten-year-old girl.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 1: The Girl Felt a Woman)


“We sat together, at the bottom of the trench, on the cold and dry ground. The sun slowly was going down, and the first signs of the cold September evening appeared. Tanya pulled out the matches and lit the cigarette butts, and we started to smoke; two small girls of seven and five. We thought that nobody was seeing us making the fumes.
Suddenly, I saw Tanya’s sister go out to the balcony of their flat, looking around the yard. When she noticed the fumes from the trench, she screamed at the whole yard,
‘Tanya! Tanya! I see you. Come immediately home!’
‘Why! Am I cold?’ shouted back Tanya, pressing the cigarette butt in the trench soil.
‘No! You want to eat!’ screamed her sister. They both imitated a joke about a caring mother.
Tanya stood up, climbed out of the trench, and left. I remained sitting alone, and it was getting dark. I also wanted to go home, wash my hands and eat. When suddenly, I heard a soft man’s voice from the darkness,
‘Let me help you to get out of the trench, little girl.’”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 2: The Paedophile Play)


“In the USSR, at schools, sometimes was carried a medical check-up for teenage girls from fourteen to seventeen years old, till the end of their school life. It was a very psychologically traumatic and humiliating experience because of the process itself, and because the results were reported to the school director, parents, and sometimes, even to the police. The girls were tested for virginity, but the boys were not.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 3: Long Ten Years)


“At that time, execution was allowed in the USSR, also for women. The maximum that prisoners could get was fifteen years. After that, capital punishment was the last measure. Mainly, the execution took place in the prison corridor by shooting the back of the inmate when he or she was taken to go somewhere, or in the prison yard. Executions were usually done by policemen.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 4: Prison for Woman)”
― Angelika Regossi, Love in Communism: A Young Woman's Adult Story

“He was awake; it seemed like a long time, all dressed, sitting deep in the armchair, small with a grey face. I stopped at the room entrance in silence, swallowed my words, and thought that maybe he didn’t even go to sleep that night. His facial colour reminded me of a teacher, dying from cancer.
‘Grandpa, what’s wrong? What’s wrong with you? Mother is coming home, did you hear?’ I came closer and touched his hand. It was colder than usual, and the frost went down my back. ‘Do you hear me? What’s wrong with you?’ I asked, and he was silent.
Suddenly, I understood everything.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 5: University of Life)


“‘Let me tell you this way. In the academy, we were told to marry early, before we go on the first shift. My first shift starts in a few months in July. I shall be half a year under the water in the submarine, carrying nuclear weapons. They advise us to marry and to make children as soon as possible because who knows what will be on that shift. Also, I told you about the radiation. I know submariners’ who cannot make children because of the radiation on the ship,’ said Prohor.
‘How to explain to you, my girl? To make children, a man needs an erection but the radiation kills it. I am afraid until I reach the rank of admiral, I shall be impotent … unable to make children …,’ Prohor told sadly from his bed.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 6: Fiance from Submarine)


“So, it happened there; between the two biggest islands of two big enemies, Japan and the USSR.
‘Now I recall that Prohor praised that they can attack unexpectedly from a submarine, from under the water, with nuclear rockets.’ I was astonished that I knew all these things, which earlier had never interested me.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 7: Between Two Men)


“‘Do you remember what I told you before I died? You promised me to think big! My little star, if you think big, you will become big! Use my diamonds and the wall clock to become big! Dream big, Anfisa—and you will be more than just a wife to a man.
‘But remember, you have to take diamonds and the clock outside the USSR, where they value these things.’ I heard my grandfather’s voice live, close, but I didn’t see him.”
(-- Angelika Regossi, “Love in Communism. A Young Woman’s Adult Story”. Chapter 8: Earner Marriage No. 1)”
― Angelika Regossi, Love in Communism: A Young Woman's Adult Story

“In the final analysis, truth will always triumph in mankind’s historical progress. Soviet literature’s strength lies in the fact that it offers the world the truth about Soviet man, the Soviet way of life, and communism.”
― Albert Belyaev, The Ideological Struggle and Literature: A Critical Analysis of the Writings of US Sovietologists

“If you plug your ears
from the Soviet anthem,
it sounds like an SS march.”
― Sfarda L. Gül, Earth Hagiography

“Вѣдь нужно быть законченнымъ слѣпцомъ, чтобы воображать, будто совѣтская оккупація или инфильтрація сдѣлала Русское національное государство чтимымъ или «популярнымъ» въ Финляндіи, Эстоніи, Латвіи, Литвѣ, Польшѣ, Галиціи, Австріи, Германіи, Чехіи, Венгріи, Румыніи, Болгаріи, Югославіи, Албаніи и Греціи; будто солдатскія изнасилованія женщинъ, чекистскіе аресты, увозы и казни, насажденіе политическаго доносительства, избіенія и разстрѣлы лидеровъ крестьянской и либеральной оппозиціи въ этихъ странахъ, пытки въ тюрьмахъ, концлагеря, фальшивыя голосованія, а также преднамѣренная повсемѣстная инфляція, всѣ эти имущественные передѣлы, конфискаціи и соціализаціи — привѣтствуются этими несчастными народами, какъ «заря свободы» или какъ «истинная демократія», какъ «желанные дары» «великой Россіи»... На самомъ же дѣлѣ въ этихъ странахъ сѣется дьявольское сѣмя и растетъ ненависть къ національной Россіи.”
― Иван Ильин, Советский Союз - не Россия

“In 2019, I went on a tour of Chernobyl. The Ukrainian guide who explained what led to the nuclear accident said something that stuck in my mind. “Americans grow up with the idea that questions lead to answers,” he said. “But Soviet citizens grew up with the idea that questions lead to trouble.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

“As his later cool relationship with Moscow was to show, he was far too independent-minded to take orders from the doctrinaire Soviets. Even if they did try to recruit him, the attempt was doomed to fail. 'They are full of self-importance and convinced that only they hold the truth. There is no truth other than theirs,' he fumed bitterly in front of one of his lawyers years later. To the same lawyer he also said that he hated the Russian Communists. He made a point of reaffirming his independence from Moscow, a matter of national pride in his eyes. 'Unlike other parties, the Venezuelan Communist Party is not pledged to Moscow, although it does have privileged relations with the Soviet Union. Venezuelans are a proud people. There is a strong libertarian tradition in the country.'

Hans-Joachim Klein, Ilich's fellow traveller for almost six months in the mid-1970s, recalled his antipathy towards the Russian Communists: 'He didn't like them. He thought they were corrupt. He did not define himself as a Marxist, but rather as an international revolutionary, a bit like Che Guevara.' Klein dismissed out of hand the story that Ilich was a KGB agent: 'That's a joke. He was expelled from Lumumba University after he took part in a demonstration. They don't really like that over there.”
― John Follain, Jackal: The Complete Story of the Legendary Terrorist, Carlos the Jackal

“গ্রাম থেকে এক বুড়ি এসেছেন মস্কোতে বেড়াতে। শহরের মাঝখানে লেনিন আর স্ট্যালিনের মূর্তি দেখে বুড়ি জানতে চাইলেন মূর্তিগুলো কার।
- এটি মহামতি লেনিনের মূর্তি, উনি আমাদের জারের বর্বর শাসন থেকে মুক্ত করেছেন। আর ওটি মহান স্ট্যালিনের মূর্তি, তিনি আমাদের নাৎসিবাহিনির হাত থেকে মুক্ত করেছেন।
- ঈশ্বর তাঁদের দীর্ঘজীবী করুন, বললেন বুড়ি। আহা, কমিউনিস্টদের কবল থেকেও এঁরা যদি আমাদের মুক্ত করতেন!”
― Shahaduz Zaman, পশ্চিমের মেঘে সোনার সিংহ

“show them, not in reasoning but in life itself, the joy of general union beyond the barriers set up by life itself”
― Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?

“If the Chinese had been able to play an active military part the need to bring in the Russians would have been correspondingly less. Had Stilwell's program for an effective combat force of 90 divisions been accomplished, there might have been no Yalta.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, Stilwell American Experience in China Part 1 of 2