A Quote by Serge Schmemann

My own kids were with me in Berlin when Germany was reunited, and they were with me in Moscow when the Soviet Union collapsed. We talked about these things at the dinner table, at their schools, with their friends.

Serge Schmemann

Quote Topics

About Berlin Collapsed Dinner Dinner Table Friends Germany Kids Me Moscow My Own Own Reunited Schools Soviet Soviet Union Table Talked Things Union Were

Quote Author

Serge Schmemann
American - Journalist
Born: April 12, 1945

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.

Doris Lessing

There used to be the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. There used to be Soviet troops in the GDR. And we must honestly admit that they were occupation troops, which remained in Germany after WWII under the guise of allied troops. Now these occupation troops are gone, the Soviet Union has collapsed, and the Warsaw Pact is no more. There is no Soviet threat, but NATO and U.S. troops are still in Europe. What for?

Vladimir Putin

We always seem to be surprised by events, especially by catastrophes, but also by wonderful events. Look at 1990, the year that the Soviet Union collapsed and apartheid in South Africa collapsed and the Berlin Wall came down. I don't know anyone who foresaw those events. It seems to me that as a species we are constantly trying to adapt ourselves to the unexpected. In the meantime, we talk as if we are in control, and we're not. This seems to me to be the truth about the twentieth century.

Doris Lessing

Americans are curious about the texture of everyday life in the Middle East because they rarely get to see it. I wanted readers to feel like they were sitting around the dinner table with me and my friends, hearing what average people really say and really think, [where] the dinner table is the best place to find out.

Annia Ciezadlo

It was probably one of the things that gave me a sense of possibility and allowed for me to see beyond the small community that I existed within. You know, I was making friends with young Soviet kids. this is during perestroika. You know, there's bread lines and vodka lines. The entire social structure of what was then the Soviet Union was radically different from what we know today.

Kehinde Wiley

After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence collapsed, and Moscow came to bitterly resent the Western interventions that destroyed Mr. Hussein and Colonel Qaddafi.

Simon Sebag Montefiore

These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.

P. J. O'Rourke

Growing up, I didn't know very much about my heritage and the Soviet Union and things of that nature. But when I saw the Soviet Union play hockey for the first time, to me, it was profound.

Gabe Polsky

My mother was really involved with the Refusenik campaign with Soviet Union Jews. They would come and stay at our house, some of them, after they managed to get out of the Soviet Union at the time. There were things that were Jewish-related happening in my house quite consistently, but it was much more from a kind of activist standpoint.

Noreena Hertz

In some communities it is - like, for me, coming out with my parents, they were not accepting; they were not understanding. So it depends. For kids in New York and L.A., maybe it's different, but for kids in Iowa, for kids in Tennessee, it's still something that's not really talked about.

Dee Rees

Strong countries and strong presidents talk to their adversaries. That's what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That's what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That's what Nixon did with Mao. I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezuela - these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don't pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying we're going to wipe you off the planet.

Barack Obama

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Reagan and Thatcher displayed Churchillian magnanimity towards Gorbachev's broken nation. Relations were never better. There was no triumphalism.

Alistair Horne

The U.S., together with trans-Atlantic allies, never recognized the occupation of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union. Moscow faced pressure or retaliation every time it tried to move toward official recognition, or at least acceptance, of its claim that the Baltic states were Soviet republics.

Kersti Kaljulaid

If you grow up and your mother or father is a doctor you talk about medicine at the dinner table. In our case we talked about politics at the dinner table.

Caroline Mulroney

The Democrat Party of the 1980s chose the Soviet Union over Ronald Reagan, in Nicaragua, and in Moscow as well. Now, all of a sudden, they don't like Russia and they don't like the Soviet Union?