A Quote by Anne Applebaum
Putin is not a mass murderer. But, having said that, he is a product of the KGB, and the KGB was, of course, the secret police force of the Soviet Union.
Related Quotes
The thing about the Russian secret police and the Soviet secret police is that one never leaves the secret police. Once a KGB man, always a KGB man.
KGB was inseparable part of the Soviet Union and the whole structure of the Soviet society. We believe that the achievements of the Soviet Union and of the Soviet society, it's main achievements until the split in 1991, it was at the same time the main achievements of the KGB, because it was working for the same cause.
Putin is not a politician. Putin is a KGB agent. And whatever he does is provocations, which KGB is usually involved in.
Putin did not head the KGB, never has. Putin was a mid-level nobody there. Putin was one of those guys in the KGB who was a climber. He was forever hoping, climbing that ladder, trying to get to the head spot.
You would think that if neoliberals were in any way honest, after the collapse of the Soviet Union the first thing to do is get rid of the Red Army and the KGB, and build up the economy. Instead, they just get rid of the economy and keep the military and the KGB.
Putin, I believe, was actually born to be a KGB agent. And I say born because I think that his father was also an agent of the secret police in Russia.
When [Vladimir] Putin, a former lieutenant-colonel in the KGB, became Russia's president on December 31, 1999 - eight years after the failed coup attempt against (then Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev, and eight years after the people had torn down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the hated founder of the KGB, in Moscow - it was admittedly a shock. Nevertheless, I decided to give Putin a chance. He seemed dynamic and capable of learning. But I had to bury my hopes after just a few months. He proved to be an autocrat - and, because the West let him do as he pleased, he became a dictator.
For years before my Navy enlistment, I had studied the Soviet Union and the KGB's history of political intrigue in preparation for a career in intelligence.
Perhaps my information hurt the Soviet Union more than it helped. I have no idea. It was not something I ever discussed with the KGB officers that I was dealing with.
If Putin and those around him had been smart enough to go in a different direction... The country was ready. The conditions were extremely favorable - with oil prices as high as they were, it was possible to do anything. It was possible to solidify democracy. After the Yeltsin years people began to think that democracy is a disaster, that democracy equals misery. Putin got a lucky break - and he used it the KGB way. He turned out to be a wily KGB man, not a wise statesman.
I've never been to the Soviet Union and the main reason for that is I was warned several times by people from the KGB who had defected to the West that it would be very unsafe for me to go there
It seems that probably Putin's father maintained some connection to the secret police throughout his life. One sign of that is that they had a telephone, and people didn't have telephones in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
Of course the biggest mafia in Russia has always been the government; in Soviet times, the Communist Party, and now a circle of former KGB and FSB.
My television teaches me that everything was wonderful in the Soviet Union. According to the programs I watch, the KGB and apparatchiks were angels, and the Stalin era was so festive that the heroes of the day must still be celebrated today.
The KGB still killed people, the KGB would not execute its last prisoner until the final days of its existence in 1991, but by the eighties a termination required paperwork and signatures and a post-action review.
Vladimir Putin is a dictator. He's not a leader. Anybody who thinks otherwise doesn't know Russian history and they don't know Vladimir Putin. Hillary Clinton knows exactly who this guy is. John McCain said, I look in his eyes and I see KGB. And Hillary kind of has that same feeling.
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