David Hoffman Quotes

Gorbachev's administration was amazingly politically naïve, inexperienced and irresponsible towards the country. It was not governance but a thoughtless renunciation of power. The admiration of the West in return only strengthened his conviction that his approach was right. But let us be clear that it was Mikhail Gorbachev, and not Boris Yeltsin, as is now widely being claimed, who first gave freedom of speech and movement to the citizens of Russia.

A revolution is sometimes necessary, but if revolutions become habitual the country in which they take place is going down-hill

The fall of the Berlin Wall really demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a bad system, and what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union, that that system was a failure.

Ladies and gentlemen, communism didn't fall. It was pushed.

I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.

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 essential meaning of perestroika for Gorbachev and his supporters was creating and acting on alternatives to failed and dangerous policies at home and abroad.

The opportunities that Gorbachev created for international relations have also been missed, perhaps even lost - here, however, primarily because of the United States.

Democratization was not a slogan, but the essence of Perestroika.

I am fully aware of the concept of political revolutions. After all, that is what we hoped might happen in the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe, but what actually happened was capitalist restoration.

When the USSR collapsed, I was 11, and unlike many people, I don't miss it.

Nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse; it was a shock for everyone.

... it's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root; F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.

It is bad governments, not bad people, who cause revolutions.

When you think of power, you think the state has power. When you look at it in terms of revolution, in terms of the state, you think of it in terms of Russia, the Soviet Union, and how those who struggled for power actually became victims of the state, prisoners of the state, and how that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. We have to think of revolution much more in terms of transitions from one epoch to another.

Mr. Gorbachev initiated Glasnost, Perestroika, so he was already, you know, way disenchanted with the rigid Communist ideology, and he was looking to become an international leader. He was more accepted actually outside of the Communist Soviet Union than inside.

It's good for a country to have a revolution every 20 years. I hope that's not where we're going. But, you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies.

Perestroika is nothing more than refined Stalinism.

I used to dream about Gorbachev before he lost power. I'd go into a panic because I was meeting him, and I had nothing to wear. I'd ask my brother what to do, and he'd tell me to wear my dressing gown. I'd tell him I can't - it's too horrible. He'd tell me to wear his as well. So I'd meet Gorbachev wearing two dressing gowns.

Donald Trump's interest in Russia dates back to Soviet times. In fact, there's extraordinary footage of him shaking hands with Mikhail Gorbachev. It comes from 1988, the peak of perestroika and Gorbachev's efforts to charm the American public.

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

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

He [Mikhail Gorbachev] has, as many great leaders have, impressive eyes....There's a kind of laser-beam stare, a forced quality, you get from Gorbachev that does not come across as something peaceful within himself. It's the look of a kind of human volcano, or he'd probably like to describe it as a human nuclear energy plant.

The social revolution is seriously compromised if it comes through a political revolution.