In the event of a victory over Germany by Soviet Russia and England, Bolshevism in Europe would inevitably follow. Under these circumstances I would prefer to see Germany win the war.
When I came to the Senate in 1997, the world was being redefined by forces no single country controlled or understood. The implosion of the Soviet Union and a historic diffusion of economic and geopolitical power created new influences and established new global power centers – and new threats.
There’s a tendency on the part of Americans, all of us, to say, ‘Hey, the Cold War is over, the Soviet Union is gone, we don’t have to worry about these guys again.’ We always have to be worried about them, we always have to be concerned about them, and we have to be well-informed.
Was the Soviet Union reformable? I would say no. They said, ‘Okay, the Soviet Union isn’t working.’ They would say, ‘No, it’s great. We just need democracy, political pluralism, private property.’ And then there was no Soviet Union. The European Union is the same.
Following the missile crisis, detente started to gain ground between the United States and the Soviet Union, so the international political climate improved after that.
I have met in my life two big destroyers: Gorbachev, who destroyed the Soviet Union, and Cameron, who destroyed the United Kingdom to some extent, even if there is no wave of Scotland to become independent.
Empires will come and go. The Soviet Union collapses; China can become a superpower, but ‘Blue Peter’ stays the same.
Our film examines the heroism, courage and prowess of the Soviet submarine force in ways never seen before.
When I handed over the names and compromised so many CIA agents in the Soviet Union, I had come to the conclusion that the loss of these sources to the U.S. would not compromise significant national defense, political, diplomatic interests.
It would be enough for me to have the system of a jury of twelve versus the system of one judge as a basis for preferring the U.S. to the Soviet Union. I would prefer the country you can leave to the country you cannot.
The breakup of the former Soviet Union has caused its grain output to plummet, but if the new republics recover economically, they could produce vast amounts of food.
The Soviet Union was a one-party state. In such states, enemies of the party become enemies of the state, and the state can punish with full weight of prosecution.
Germany is one of the medium powers of the world. It is a non-nuclear power. It is in a lower class than the United States, the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom and others.
I tried to contribute to the defeat of the Soviets. If I contributed 1%, it is 1% of something enormous.
You know, the Democrats want to balance the budget by raising spending and raising taxes. The Soviet Union had a balanced budget.
In the ’80s, before I was born, my dad played in the old Soviet Top League in our home country of Armenia. He was a small but very quick striker. ‘Soviet Soldier’ magazine actually honoured him with its ‘Knight of Attack’ award in 1984.
The Afghans did not have sophisticated weapons like the Soviets did, but with their faith they defeated a superpower.
During my childhood in the Cold War, my family saw America as a great ally in our common struggle to keep back Soviet communism.
The way that Soviet intelligence tried to reshape the balance of power in the Middle East is essential to understand the developments that led to the outbreak of the Six-Day War.
Chechnya was part of that whole wave of entities of the Soviet Union that had a very separate sense of identity, of political and social history, that set them apart from the rest of Russia.
In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.
Then I was lucky I met with my future husband, and I started new life with my husband, and I was happy again. He was a musician. I start to travel with him through Europe also and around the former Soviet Union.
Since the end of the Cold War, Soviet aggression had been replaced by a number of particularly venomous threats, from Timothy McVeigh to Osama bin Laden.
I am certain that my family – my grandmother, mother and myself – had a credit score of zero when we arrived in 1976. There were no credit cards in the Soviet Union, and we didn’t have any money.
In the Soviet Union, you always have the feeling someone is watching you.
Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and beliefs had been shaken.
The Army I grew up in was focused on high-intensity conflict against a peer competitor called the Soviet Union.
Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country.
Escapees from Communist China and the Soviet Bloc have inoculated America from the evils of Marxism in the past, but it seems every generation needs a new lesson.
If we look at where relations between the Soviet Union and Germany were in 1945 and where we stand now, then we have achieved so much.
Honduras is strongly anti-Communist, maintains no diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and has provided vital support for United States-backed rebels fighting to overthrow the Sandinistas in neighboring Nicaragua.
What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?
Americans are not intrinsically imperial, but we ended up dominant by default: Europe disappeared after the Second World War, the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, so here we are.
In the Cold War, a lot of Soviet actions could be explained as extensions of Czarist imperial ambitions, but that didn’t stop us from studying Marxism in theory and Communism in practice to better understand that adversary.
Kissinger celebrants inevitably point to two things to justify their admiration: an opening to China – ‘rapprochement’ – and improved relations with the Soviet Union – detente – which included SALT, a historic arms-limitation treaty.
Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they’d both unite against an invasion from Mars.
My mom grew up in the Soviet Bloc, and she was a Tiger Mom. We didn’t get away with much.
All the politics of the post-war period was about the clash between the Soviet Union and America, and virtually all issues ended up being subordinated to that. Now, the question is, what is the most a socialist can achieve in a global economy?
I think there, there also had been just before I got to Honduras a rather spectacular capture of an arms shipment that from Nicaragua across Honduran test, territory destined for El Salvador and I think that some of that equipment had been also to Cuba and the Soviet bloc.
Ronald Reagan will be remembered for leading the United States during a time of tremendous international transition – the demise of the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the end of the Cold War.
The collapse of the Soviet Union could not have been a source of national pride for many in Russia. The one person who has capitalized on this the most has been Vladimir Putin.
My family fled the Soviet Union when I was three and a half years old. Upon arriving in New York City in 1979, my father worked multiple jobs to support us, all the while learning English at night.
So seven new countries, three of them formerly part of the Soviet Union, and the others part of the Warsaw Pact, will become full members of NATO next year.
The difficulties of conducting espionage against the Soviet Union in the Soviet Union were such that historically the Agency had backed away from the task.
The Soviet Union, the socialist camp, the People’s Republic of China, and North Korea helped us resist, with essential supplies and weapons, the implacable blockade of the United States, the most powerful empire ever to exist.
NATO was built to counteract the Soviet Union in its day and time. At this point there is no threat coming from the Soviet Union, because there is no Soviet Union anymore. And where there was the Soviet Union once, there is now a number of countries, among them the new and democratic Russia.
As a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, I felt it was ridiculous to expect me to atone for the sins of slavery and segregation, to say nothing of the household drudgery and workplace discrimination suffered by women.
It was one thing to contain the Soviet Union in Europe because Britain, France, and Germany were all willing to join in. But will Japan and other Asian countries be willing to join in the containment of China?
Historians don’t really like to carry on speculative debates, but you could certainly argue that the likelihood of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe was extremely, extremely low.
Even during the years of the Cold War, the intense confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we always avoided any direct clash between our civilians and, most certainly, between our military.
If you look at great human civilizations, from the Roman Empire to the Soviet Union, you will see that most do not fail simply due to external threats but because of internal weakness, corruption, or a failure to manifest the values and ideals they espouse.
