Quotes About Soviets

The UN Human Rights office was once the Soviet Cultural Center, but few Cambodians ever went in there. They were too afraid of the Soviets to want to learn about their culture.

Why have the Soviets stood aside and allowed us to settle Berlin, Vietnam and the Middle East? One, because the United States is big, mean and tough as hell and they know it. Two, the obsession with peace in the USSR. Twenty million Russian people were killed during World War II. We must have the fear elements working, but also the hope element.

The Soviets were also happy to use American art forms to advance their cause in the United States. By the 1940s, American communists had fully embraced and significantly co-opted folk music. The American Communist Party was essentially an agency of the Soviet government. "Folk singers had become a ceremonial part of Communist Party meetings.

The Cold War may be 'over' for the West. For the Soviets it has entered a new, active and promising phase.

Americans think Soviets are so grim. I want them to see that they can smile.

In 1972-73, the Soviets began running operations against me. In 1977, these operations became very serious.

I thought that in general we in the United States were too optimistic in believing that the Soviets might alter what had been for a long time, as a matter of fact for centuries, fundamental Russian policies in respect to the rest of the world.

The whole nuclear-arms-control and non-proliferation policy of the nuclear powers is a fraud: The Americans could not prevent the Soviets from replicating their weaponry, and then could not object when the British did the same.

Reagan did not wait out the Soviets; he beat them.

During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.

Part of science is the questioning of authority, absolute freedom of ideology. The Soviets did some very good science, but when science ran into ideology, it had trouble. Science flourishes best in a democracy.

What bin Laden had hoped to achieve in Afghanistan in the post-9/11 period, which was to drag the United States into a protracted guerrilla war like the one he had fought against the Soviets, never happened. Instead, that protracted guerrilla war is now playing out in Iraq, in the heart of the Middle East.

During the Cold War, we gathered information by listening to the Soviets, taking pictures of the Soviets, and we allowed our human intelligence to decline.

I just don't see this old idea of the Red peril, itching to take over the world. I think you can explain a lot of the Soviets' moves as stemming from a basic sense of insecurity.

Maybe we should hold the next [Olympic] games in Afghanistan and hope the Soviets pull out of that one too.

The president can't tell you what we got. I'll tell you what the world got. The world has a burgeoning nuclear power that didn't, as the Soviets, say "we might defend ourselves in a war."

A more down-to-earth project run by the Soviets had determined that eight square meters of algae—an expanse of pond scum about the size of two ping-pong tables—was needed to keep a single human supplied with oxygen.

The Bolsheviks promised their supporters 'Peace, Bread and Power to the Soviets'. Peace turned out to mean abject capitulation.

After fighting for four long years, we were completely surprised by the Soviets' efforts to absorb Eastern Europe, and their rejection of almost all wartime assurances of elections to come.

The history of Lenin's train is not exclusively the property of the Soviets. In part, it is a parable about great-power intrigue, and one rule there is that great powers almost always get things wrong.

Vietnam's going to be a big problem for your government unless it's very smart." Bartlett said confidently, "Thank God it is. JFK handled Cuba. He'll handle Vietnam too. He made the Big K back off there and he can do it again. We won that time. The Soviets took their missiles out.

I think the Soviets have deliberately enticed you into Vietnam. You'll send in troops but they won't. You'll be fighting Viets and the jungle, and the Soviets will be the winners. Your CIA's already there in strength. They're running an airline. Even now airfields are being constructed with U.S. money, U.S. arms are pouring in. You've soldiers fighting there already.

By early 1942, the Nazis had wreaked destruction in the USSR that went well beyond the understanding of most people in the West. They killed millions of Soviets, looted everything from machines in factories to the gold from the mouths of the dead, and destroyed all that they could not cart away.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized that it would fly in the face of morals if the U.S. offered any aid to the Soviets in fighting the Germans.