Ivan Krastev Quotes

I think we have very steady records of President Putin, who inherited the country with democratic values.

The Chinese people are not a new kind of human nature. Human nature in China is the same as it is elsewhere. When you start in a tyrannical regime to hand out freedom there is no place to draw that line and expect that line to hold. And so it’s only a matter of time before this regime comes down

There are no longer opponents of Putin's policy, and if there are, they are mentally ill and should be sent to prophylactic health examination.

Nobody in the American political establishment is happy about Mr. Trump’s wild-eyed accusations of voter fraud and media conspiracies because they understand that it undermines their own credibility as leaders in a democracy. This is exactly why my country’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, is so delighted by Mr. Trump’s charges.as

Putin has all the power under his control, all the security forces, all the billions of dollars he needs. It's mad to pretend otherwise.

We've been saying Putin is a dictator for years who doesn't care about the law.

We decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves over and above the whole nation.

Idealism is the despot of thought, just as politics is the despot of will.

Revolution may not be pro-Western or democratic.

The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed.

Free nations of the world cannot allow Taiwan, a beacon of democracy, to be subdued by an authoritarian China.

I should like to underline: no people, no country, in which a Communist dictatorship has been established, ever found its way out of it.

If the communist party is controlling China, they represent China.

Putin can't afford to leave the office because he will be in real danger of being prosecuted for things he and his people did during their stay in power.

And look at the mess that Russia is; most Chinese don't want to follow that.

Fig leaves of democratic procedure … hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship

Independently of its misdeeds, the mere power, — the bare existence of such a power, — is a thing irreconcilable with the nature and spirit of our institutions

The end of some of the harshest dictatorships has not necessarily spelled a more free world. The extinction of the thing we despise is not giving rise to the democracy we hoped for.

We had a revolution 2 years ago, and we see a people moving from a completely authoritarian system into a democracy. They don’t know how democracy works. They don’t know the ingredients of a democracy.

They didn't begin telling the truth in the Soviet Union until after it collapsed, did they?

In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values

Nothing can excuse the cruelties of Communist Russia, though in the East torture does not provoke revolt as it would in the West.

In power for 16 years now, Mr. Putin and his global propaganda machine aggressively promote the idea that democracy is a chaotic mess that only the hero Putin can save Russia from falling into.

The Chinese people don't get to vote but they do get to grumble.

To somebody like Obama, substantive opposition is not tolerable. The objective is to eliminate all opposition - be it a political party, be it media, or what have you.