Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Quotes

Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy.

I spent my life studying communism and Soviet systems.

I was part of a generation that believed in socialism and finally found that belief corroded and destroyed. That is not renouncing Communism or socialism. It's reaching a certain degree of enlightenment about what the Soviet Union practices.

Let's not talk about Communism. Communism was just an idea, just pie in the sky.

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.

[Communism] is the 20th century's most extraordinary political aberration.

The Bolsheviks called their system socialist so as to exploit the moral prestige of socialism. The West adopted the same usage for the opposite reason: to defame the feared libertarian ideals by associating them with the Bolshevik dungeon

I do not believe that Communism will overwhelm the free world.

We have unified the state in such a way that if any part were isolated from the common socialist state, it would not only inflict harm on the latter but would be unable to exist independently and would inevitably fall under foreign subjugation. Therefore, whoever attempts to destroy the socialist state … is an enemy, a sworn enemy of the state and of the peoples of the USSR. And we will destroy each and every such enemy, even if he is an old Bolshevik; we will destroy all his kin; we will mercilessly destroy anyone who by his deeds or his thoughts—threatens the unity of this socialist state. To the complete destruction of all enemies, themselves and their kin.

The century that just ended was the bloodiest ever recorded. Enormous sacrifices were required of our youth to preserve our free way of life. But because they were willing to make those sacrifices, our survival as a nation and as a free people is no longer threatened. Democracy and private enterprise, though not without their faults, have prevailed over the collectivist ideologies that threatened us with destruction.

The major political event of the twentieth century is the death of socialism.

… 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.

I'm not a communist, but I'm not anti-communist either. I'm not afraid of communists, and declare that if a country wants to be communist, it has the right to be so.

The culture and values of many former Soviet republics really do differ from what prevails in the West.

Having emigrated to the United States as a small boy from the Soviet Union, I am instinctively suspicious of socialism and inveterately opposed to communism.

I never accepted Communist dogma or theory.

I am one of those people who believes that the solution to the world's problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain.

Think about it: Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, North Korea, the former Soviet Union - they all start with the intention of leveling the playing field - or making things better for the little guy - and instead, they created misery, poverty, destruction and a permanent ruling class of bureaucrats.

The goals of Russia since 1917 have been to destroy capitalism, discredit democracy, and show that Communist collectivism was the greatest social and political system in the world.

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.

The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.

Socialism, whether it's the 'soft tyranny' of the EuroAmerican management state or the murderously repressive forms taken by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, is all about disindividuation, a steady, relentless erasure of the individual differences among us, everything that makes us who we are. 'Everybody in, nobody out!' is the marching mantra of militant collectivized medicine, but it accurately describes all other aspects of collectivism as well. No alternatives allowed, no choices, no individualism, no individuality, and ultimately, no individuation.

Commies love concrete.

This bill reminds me of the tactics of the former Soviet Union - and we know how successful that was.

When I was young, communism, which had a certain allure to me, was clearly a failed experiment in the Soviet Union and in China. And yet, anti-communism was as bad.