Quotes About Communism

The initials of the Communist Party in the 1930s, VKP, were read by peasant wits to stand for "Second serfdom" (Vtoroe Krepostnoe Pravo), while in the reading of some Leningrad youths the initials of the USSR itself—SSSR [CCCP] in Russian—became "Stalin's death will save Russia" (Smert' Stalina Spaset Rossiiu).

The wonder is that communism lasted so long. But then again, modern poetry lasted a long time, too.

Schneider's characters, like Kundera's, are sentient and sophisticated figures at a time when the constraints of Communist rule persist but its energy has entirely vanished.

I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal.

You said, 'Planning is something for communist countries; democracy and planning don't go together!' But, with all the errors we committed, our plans succeeded.

Fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left. This fact – an inconvenient truth if there ever was one – is obscured in our time by the equally mistaken belief that fascism and communism are opposites. In reality, they are closely related, historical competitors for the same constituents.

Fascism and communism were and are religions of the state.

Toil, comrade," he said, "is the highest aim of our lives. Who does not toil, shall not eat." The book was filled. The official applied his rubber stamp to the last page. The stamp bore a globe overshadowed by a crossed sickle and hammer.

There is no difference between communism and socialism, except in the means of achieving the same ultimate end: communism proposes to enslave men by force, socialism—by vote. It is merely the difference between murder and suicide.

Observe also that an honest theoretician does not try to present his ideas in the guise of their opposites. But Kant's philosophy is presented as "pure reason"—altruism is presented as a doctrine of "love"—communism is presented as "liberation"—and egalitarianism is presented as "justice.

Most of them don't know what communism is, could not pick it out of a lineup. They only know what anticommunism is. The two are practically unrelated.

Communism? Most people have no idea what it is. I do not exaggerate. Look around this restaurant, ask any of these fine citizens. 'Excuse me, sir, I've been thinking of an idea, a bunch of working people owning the means of their own production. What do you make of that?' You know, he might be all for it.

They won't admit to being bigots, so they want him fired for being a communist. Like they even know what a communist is!

War is a part of human nature, and we Japanese are human. But we have never fought, we have certainly never built weapons of mass destruction, to convince the world of the rightness of an idea. It took America and its bastard twin, communism, to do that." He

AMERICANS SHOULD HAVE been able to celebrate the release of 7,200 soldiers from Communist prisons after an armistice ended the fighting in Korea in July 1953. Instead they recoiled in shock. Many prisoners, it turned out, had written statements criticizing the United States or praising Communism. Some had confessed to committing war crimes. Twenty-one chose to stay behind in North Korea or China. The Pentagon announced that they were considered deserters and would be executed if found.

Dulles had two lifelong obsessions: fighting Communism and protecting the rights of multinational corporations.

The Bedford Street complex was about to become something unique: a CIA "safe house" in the heart of New York to which unsuspecting citizens would be lured and surreptitiously drugged, with the goal of finding ways to fight Communism.

The image of CIA men traipsing through Mexican villages in search of a fungus that would help them defeat Communism seems outlandish in retrospect. Gottlieb, however, saw the "magic mushroom" the same way he saw LSD and every other substance he was investigating. All were potential weapons of covert war.

I don't understand how we can fight the Communist Party under the leadership of the Communist Party ... I don't understand why perestroika is being carried out by the same people who brought the country to the point where it needs perestroika.

Valerian Kuibyshev, head of the Supreme Council of the Economy, blustered to the party organization in his bailiwick in January 1928. He allowed that the market "could be one current, but a Communist and Bolshevik has always been and is able to swim against the current," and concluded that "the will of the party can create miracles . . . and is creating and will create miracles despite all these market phenomena.

Lenin taught us that every party member should be a Chekist, that is, should observe and denounce. . . . If we suffer from anything, it is not denunciations but non-denunciations.

Communism's entire existence depended on coercion.

The tree is rotten, all it needs is a good shake and the bad apples will fall. Communism is evil. It prevents people from being free.

A similar semianarchy burst out in parts of Central Asia and the Balkans in the 1990s, when the communist federations that had ruled them for decades suddenly unraveled. One Bosnian Croat explained why ethnic violence erupted only after the breakup of Yugoslavia: "We lived in peace and harmony because every hundred meters we had a policeman to make sure we loved each other very much."33