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There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.

Communism was something so hideous that you had to be an exceptional conformist or a fool not to see the evil around you.

As is well known, 'McCarthyism' was an alleged focus of political evil in the 1950s: Accusations of Communist taint, without factual basis; bogus lists of supposed Communists who never existed; failure in the end to produce even one provable Communist or Soviet agent, despite his myriad charges of subversion.

As I look back at the span of the Cold War in those early days, in the '50s, for example, there was a great deal of Soviet propaganda here in the United States, but it was clumsy, and it was anchored to a lot of ideological support in certain circles in America itself.

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.

One of the things I'm most proud of about my country is the fact that we did lick McCarthyism back in the fifties.

Communism brought out the worst in human nature and crippled people's ability or ambition to participate in a market economy.

I grew up in a family that despised not only communism but collectivism, socialism, and any 'ism' that deprived the individual of his or her natural rights.

Communism didn't work because people weren't ready for it, it was corrupt, and because it squelched individualism.

It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me.