A Quote by Masha Gessen

Soviet mathematics was particularly good in the second half of the 20th century, basically because of the arms race, because the Soviet Union realized... World War II created the conditions for the Soviet Union to become a superpower.
This much I would say: Socialism has failed all over the world. In the eighties, I would hear every day that there is no inflation in the Soviet Union, there is no poverty in the Soviet Union, there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union. And now we find that, due to Socialism, there is no Soviet Union!
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.
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.
NASA was invented as a response to Cold War steps. There are those who presumed that we went to the moon because we're explorers. We went to the moon because we were at war with the Soviet Union. And so when it became clear that they (Soviet Union) were not going to the moon, we're done with the moon.
The first year I was in office, only about 800 people came out of the Soviet Union, Jews. By the third year I was in office... second year, 1979, 51,000 came out of the Soviet Union. And every one of the human rights heroes - I'll use the word - who have come out of the Soviet Union, have said it was a turning point in their lives, and not only in the Soviet Union but also in places like Czechoslovakia and Hungary and Poland [they] saw this human rights policy of mine as being a great boost to the present democracy and freedom that they enjoy.
There's an amazing movie, I think the best war movie ever made: it's called 'Come and See.' Soviet film. Made in the Soviet Union. It was about Belarusian and Ukrainian partisans in World War II.
Back in 1956, we signed a treaty and surprisingly it was ratified both by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union and the Japanese Parliament. But then Japan refused to implement it and after that the Soviet Union also, so to say, nullified all the agreements reached within the framework of the treaty.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, people thought the last Soviet generation was going to be the great hope for democracy. When that failed, their hopes shifted to the first post-Soviet generation, and then the second one.
In 1956, I received an invitation to a dedication of an observatory in the Soviet Union, in Soviet Armenia, as a guest of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all - in one way or another - obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.
Twenty years ago, I said there was going to be something that would stop the Soviet Union from taking over the world. And now we see that the Soviet Union has been stopped, through its own disintegration.
Women are the most denigrated social group in the Soviet Union. The idea of women's emancipation is only a slogan in - but also, I should say, in many places outside - the Soviet Union. But especially in the militaristic Soviet society, people only thought of life in terms of struggle and the workers' toil.
In the Soviet Union I was the head of all oil production. And you know in the Soviet Union, you didn't get that job unless you were really worth it.
Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.
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 organizing principle of the United States defensive foreign policy had been opposition to the Soviet Union. There is no more Soviet Union.
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