Paul Berman Quotes

The guilt of Stalin and his immediate entourage before the Party and the people for the mass repressions and lawlessness they committed is enormous and unforgivable.

Russia has never recognized the crime of the Soviet regime. The crimes of the Stalin regime and the millions who died—There was no repentance.

Not counting the 26.5 million Russians who died in WWII, 20 million Russians were killed by the Stalinist regimes….the Stalinist regeme is still an open wound that the country can’t close.

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 is a shameful stain on our country's history.

For a time I gave the appearance of defending Stalin. I didn't defend what he had done; the fact is, nobody could defend the things that Khrushchev revealed.

In the post-Soviet era, the most interesting work on the Stalinist period has been social history, far beyond the Kremlin walls - the study of what one of its leading practitioners, Sheila Fitzpatrick, in her book 'Everyday Stalinism,' called 'ordinary life in extraordinary times.'

Believe it or not, some Western analysts in the 1930s insisted that Stalin was a 'moderate,' controlled by extremists like the secret police chief Nikolai Yezhov.

Stalin's henchman Molotov, 96, died old and in bed, a privilege he helped to deny to millions.

I ALWAYS LIKED MR STALIN.

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 was an equal opportunity murderer. He killed his own family—he killed his real enemies

Stalin loved trials so long as everyone got shot at the end.

… the inhuman communist police state tyranny

Stalin's methods did not help.

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

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.

The shameless criminality of Lenin, Stalin, and the Cheka cast a long shadow, but I don't see their kind returning anytime soon.

We study, as Americans, the extreme aspects of repression under the Stalinist era. We're focused on them. The vast majority of Russian citizens, it was a much softer type of being disconcerted.

In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.

The much greater crimes of the Soviet Gulags occurred over decades and cost millions of lives.

We became convinced that, regardless of Stalin's awful brutality and his reign of terror, he was a great war leader. Without Stalin, they never would have held.

Unlike the Holocaust, Stalin's murders are forgotten: dust blowing in the wind.

Show me where Stalin is buried and I'll show you a Communist Plot.