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Russia made a decisive contribution to the victory over Nazism. That's clear to every honest observer. So, therefore, in a certain manner, it is indeed part of the country's national psyche.

Malicious attacks on the Soviet Union produce a natural feeling of indignation.

Soviet regime in a way deprived me from my childhood in my homeland, because my father was in military, and after the Yalta agreement he was sent to teach in military academy in Riga, and I was born then.

Remember, we know the end of the story of World War II and the Cold War. But day by day, living in fear of the Nazis and then in fear of the Soviets, the outcome was by no means certain.

Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.

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.

And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.

Throughout Soviet times, I understood what was really happening in the world around me.

Russia itself is an extremely complex country, and sometimes I feel like all of that comes back to haunt me. I can see why so many Russian writers were so tortured.

The West will have to choose: either to come to terms with Russians, or to receive a retaliatory blow. This retaliatory blow will not be by means of war. We will resort to the same weapon: nationalism.