Quotes About Soviet period

The first large-scale party purge of the Soviet period took place during the ensuing months, under the direction of the secretarial trio, and Molotov reported to the Eleventh Party Congress in March 1922 that the party's membership had been reduced from 660,000 to about 500,000 through the expulsions and forced resignations that resulted. "Now," he said, "those numerous currents and semi-formed factions do not exist."[369]

The Soviet period was a disaster, not least because supply lines were so long and so corrupt that little was left by the time goods reached the Russian Far East except things nobody wanted, such as the fabled ten thousand left-foot gumboots. (On that occasion, transport planning failed to the extent that the 10,000 left boots went in the opposite direction to the same number of right boots, heading nobody knew where).

During the thousand years of her history Russia had seen many great things. During the Soviet period the country had seen global military victories, vast construction sites, whole new cities, dams across the Dnieper and the Volga, canals joining different seas. The country had seen mighty tractors and skyscrapers...There was only one thing Russia had not seen during this thousand years: freedom.

Horror stories like this — and the issue of Leningrad cannibalism as a whole — could not be talked about openly during the Soviet period. Such an admission of the breakdown of society was considered demoralizing. Only in 2002 were NKVD files opened so academics could discover the gruesome statistical realities of person-eating.