The readings of Soviet society are as many as the experts you speak to. In my view, it's a society that is overdue for measures of democratization and organization.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.
If you ask anyone on any street corner in the world what the Soviet Union looks like, they would probably have very strong opinions. And they probably would be wrong.
The great drama of Russian history has been between its state and society. Put simply, Russia has always had too much state and not enough society.
A Soviet man is a product of invisible changes, degradation and progressive deformation. Breaking the chain of those changes is hard. Perhaps they are irreversible.
One must say bluntly that it is an unattractive sight when, with a view to smearing the Soviet people, leaders of such a country as the United States resort to what almost amounts to obscenities alternating with hypocritical preaching about morals and humanism.
Stalinism is linked with a cult of personality and massive violations of the law, with repression and camps. There is nothing like that in Russia and, I hope, will never again be.
Russian democracy is the power of the Russian people with their own traditions of national self-government, and not the realisation of standards foisted on us from outside.
The interests of the Soviet Union are in controlling highly developed countries and having the benefit of their economies so that they can run their own inefficient empire.
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.
Textbooks are Soviet propaganda.
No opposing quotes found.