Leonid Brezhnev Quotes
Sasha, aren’t you a good communist? How can you allow so much ideological freedom? Do something!.
Russian Tanks moved into Prague and returned “order” ending the reform. Dubcheck was arrested and flown to the Soviet Union.
Leonid I. Brezhnev, 1906-1982, Russian Premier, Statement to Czech Communist Party Head Alexander Dubchek when Czechoslovakia allowed freedom of political expression and reform, 1968
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This was one of the first of the world communist leaders who had concluded that the Russian communist state and its revolution had failed. Russia of 1923 was perceived as too dictatorial and not democratic enough. At the same time they thought Russia had not only sold out the democratic nature of communism but also the economic as well by having too much private property and making economic deals with Western capitalists giving concessions of all kinds to Krupp and other major Multinational companies to try and develop international trade and investment. Politically the communist critics thought Russian communism too left wing and undemocratic and economically too right wing and capitalistic.
This was a big factor that made the Red Scare so damaging.
Harriman at that time was the United States Ambassador to Russia and one of President Roosevelt’s closest advisers. There were those who claimed that the Roosevelt administration was very naïve about the potential danger of Stalin. This statement as well as others like it, show that the administration was not so naïve and ignorant.
Russia suffered enormous casualties in WWII where over 20 million Russians were killed. None the less, at the end of the war Europe was devastated with no viable economy. The fascist states and the democracies were all devastated. But Russia was still functioning. Instead of crediting the enormous Russian land mass, the success of the Russian Army, and the enormous amount of aid that the U. S. had provided, Stalin concluded that the reason was the Soviet Communist System.
Despite the fact that many Americans saw communists and socialists as of the same ilk, socialists were very suspicious of communists—especially the “party discipline” and the lack of individual freedom, while the communists saw the socialists as just another form of fascism and attacked it violently. Later, the party line against socialists softened as Cold War communist strategy solicited assistance from the socialist, unaligned nations.
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was a Soviet politician who led the Soviet Union as General Secretary of the governing Communist Party (1964–1982) and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (1960–1964, 1977–1982). His 18-year term as general secretary was second only to Joseph Stalin's in duration. While Brezhnev's rule was characterised by political stability and notable foreign policy successes, it was also marked by corruption, inefficiency, economic stagnation, and rapidly growing technological gaps with the West.
