Michael Winner Quotes

Stalin is the most popular figure in all of Russia.

Stalin was born Joseph Dzhugashvili in 1878 in Gori, Georgia, on the periphery of the Russian Empire. His father was a hard-drinking cobbler whose relationship with Joseph's mother, Keke Geladze, came to an end when the boy was around six years old.

Even now we feel that Stalin was devoted to Communism, he was a Marxist, this cannot and should not be denied.

Psychology and economics are Stalin's favorable winds. He is also the party 'boss.' But he is, in addition, the Soviet Union's most striking personality.

Stalin is a strong, ruthless revolutionist and therefore a very potential threat to future world conditions.

I rather liked Stalin and Molotov, got along fine with them.

Joseph Stalin is a titan of thought. His name is to be given to an entire century.

I got very well acquainted with Joe Stalin, and I like old Joe! He is a decent fellow. But Joe is a prisoner of the Politburo.

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.

No one has murdered more communists than the Communist Soviet Union under Stalin

Heaven’s Yes. I was hopelessly naïve regarding Joseph Stalin. I thought he just drove too hard.

The statues of Lenin and Stalin are down, but the fight against their ghosts seems harder.

I was born too late to have any temptation with communism, or at least Soviet-type communism. Travelling in Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union, you clearly don't want to defend a system that would have empty shops and a totalitarian regime and internal passports.

Those of us who lived under communism for most of our lives were looking toward the Western world because of its values, emphasis on democracy, individual liberties and freedom, and economic prosperity.

When you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we're 'well-placed to weather the storm', I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line.

The Soviet state builds bodies—mounds of them.

If only I could dine with Stalin once a week, there would be no trouble at all.

… the unfortunate but inevitable connection between the word “socialism” and the unmitigated crucifixion of Civil Liberties in the East [Eastern Europe dominated by the Russian Communist Party.

In the Soviet Union those who once extolled Stalin to the skies have now in one sweep condemned him to purgatory … Stalin’s mistakes amounted to only 30 percent of the whole and his achievement to 70 percent. On balance he was a great Marxist.

Stalin, of course, never went on trial, but his legacy did. In 1956, three years after his death, he was denounced by Nikita Khrushchev. And his crimes were even more explicitly exposed by Mikhail Gorbachev during the late '80s. Yet to many, Stalin remains more legitimate as a Russian leader than anyone since.

Romania, which had the worst dictator in Eastern Europe, Ceausescu, he was a darling of the West. The United States and Britain loved him. He was supported until the last minute.

When I entered the film school at the Prague Academy in the '50s, it was the hardest time in the Communist countries. The ideological control of the society was almost absolute.

Take it from someone who fled the Iron Curtain: I know what happens when you give the Russians a green light.

In the Soviet Union, no industry went under until they all did.

Stalin is a shameful stain on our country's history.