Masha Gessen Quotes

For 73 years a totalitarian regime ruled the country. Totalitarian regime.

The whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost.

Maintaining legitimacy in an authoritarian state is very difficult.

With the suppression of all political parties, the bases were laid for the totalitarian state.

Europeans have sometimes been beguiled by a despotism that comes concealed in the seductive form of an ideal – as it did in the cases of Hitler and Stalin. This fact may remind us that the possibility of despotism is remote neither in space nor in time.

A midnight knock on the door followed by execution is no way a leader should be treated.

Fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression.

A police state is a country run by criminals

It's very clear that Vladimir Putin has decided that he will eliminate his opponents and anyone who stands up for democracy and freedom. And he does so with relative impunity.

Fascism may be good at making the trains run on time, but you wouldn't like some of the destinations.

As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman.

In any case, it's the cowardice of people like you who give dictators the chance to install themselves!

The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly.

The essence of fascism is to make laws forbidding everything and then enforce them selectively against your enemies.

Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile.

The autocracies of the Arab world have been as economically destructive as they've been politically repressive.

Right now, we have no possibility of politics because we have a one-party state.

All military regimes use security as the reason why they should remain in power. It's nothing original.

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.

Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It's a band of power-driven people.

Bhutto's regime is remembered for having one of the worst human rights records in Pakistan's history, and her government did not allow the media freedoms she criticizes Musharraf for crushing.

Every one of the world's dictatorships can and does claim to be acting in the name of the people.

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

Since Castro took power, the Cuban people have been denied basic human freedoms. No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no political freedom. And the regime uses brutality and violence to suppress these freedoms and impose its will.

Yanukovych has changed everything in Ukrainian jails - real criminals have been released, while representatives of the middle class and politically rebellious free-minded people have filled the prisons.