P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Few people understand the magnitude of the catastrophe that happened late in the 1980s when the Communist Party had failed to modernize the Soviet Union.

Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.

Today's Russia is not to be compared with the Soviet Union of back then.

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.

In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.

Starting reforms in the Soviet Union was only possible from above, only from above. Any attempt to go from below was suppressed, suppressed in a most resolute way.

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.

I remember my time growing up. It was a little bit difficult because the Soviet Union was broken.

Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.

What did in the Soviet Union was the Soviet Union.

If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.

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

Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and beliefs had been shaken.

There used to be this country called the Soviet Union; it's not there anymore. Our technology was better than theirs.

Stalin is the most popular figure in all of Russia.

On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union, and within a few weeks the full-scale reformation he attempted to carry out both inside his country and in its cold war relations with the West, particularly the United States, began to unfold.

The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

I would guess that he [Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev] would ultimately fail—that is to say, that he will not be able to reform the Soviet economy. And when that happens, he's likely to be replaced by somebody who will be far more hostile [to the U. S.].

I was very anti-Soviet and very pro-Russian..

We were appreciating as early as 1978 that the Soviet economy was in serious trouble. We didn’t make the leap that we should have made – I could have made, that the economic trouble would lead to political trouble. We thought that they would tighten their belt under a Stalin-like regime and continue marching on.

Fall of the Berlin wall? Being there was fun. Nations that flaked off of the Soviet Union in southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus? Being there was not so fun.

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.

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.

I remember the Soviet Union and when the Iron Curtain fell down in 1991. I was just 20 years old, and everybody had a dream to live in a modern democratic society, in a modern country. More than 15 years passed, and nothing changed. There's a saying I like very much: if you want a thing done well, do it by yourself.

I didn't believe that the Soviet Union would ever break down.