I started, you know, to work as a diplomat during the Soviet days, and in spite of ideology being very high on the Communist Party agenda, I can assure you that in practical terms, we have always been trying to be pragmatic.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Even when I was at CIA, I'd go to visit foreign leaders and I'd say, 'You know, I'm not a diplomat. I'm just an old CIA guy'... I said, 'If I wanted to be diplomatic, I'd have been a diplomat.'
I've worked as a diplomat before I became a politician.
I was very restless. I really wanted to be a part of a kind of a progressive society. I was fed up with these Communist doctrines and you were hassled all the time with members of the Party committee who were KGB, what you have to do, where in the West you can go or not to go.
I majored in political communications, so I intended to be a diplomat.
My notion of the KGB came from romantic spy stories. I was a pure and utterly successful product of Soviet patriotic education.
I can explain my work to the cleaner or the president; it's all the same to me. I am very communist in this way.
Without a tutor to help me in the study of Marxism-Leninism, I was no more than a theorist and, of course, had total confidence in the Soviet Union.
I address myself to the Communists, to those Communists who were prompted to join the Party by the progressive ideas of mankind and socialism, and not by selfish personal interests - let us represent our pure and just ideas by pure and just means.
In Georgia, people had already understood that communism couldn't survive, and I came to the institute in Moscow, and people still believed in it. They were completely different people, and I found it very difficult psychologically.
I decided to go into politics because of our Soviet-style government.