Stephen Cohen 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.

Fig leaves of democratic procedure … hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship

Stalin's methods did not help.

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

Stalinism is linked with a cult of personality and massive violations of the law, with repression and camps. There is nothing like that in Russia and, I hope, will never again be.

Cromwell is just as much of a bloody dictator as was Stalin.

Dictators must have enemies. They must have internal enemies to justify their secret police and external enemies to justify their military forces.

When the FBI adopts the tactics of the Soviet Union and Hitler's Gestapo, it's time for the Director no longer to be the Director.

No one has murdered more communists than the Communist Soviet Union under Stalin

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.

Russia’s back yard is littered with authoritarian regimes—Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Uzbekistan, to name a few—whose leaders seem to view positions as lifetime appointments.

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

… 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.

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.

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

Stalin is a shameful stain on our country's history.

Kim Jong-un's style is more suggestive of Saddam Hussein or his murderous son, Uday Hussein.

The Soviet Union was a one-party state. In such states, enemies of the party become enemies of the state, and the state can punish with full weight of prosecution.

Unfortunately, writing and reporting the truth is not allowed under Castro's tyrannical dictatorship.

I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.

Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.

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

Communism may be over as an economic system, but as a model of state domination, it is very much alive in the People's Republic of China and in Putin's police state.

Fascism in Uruguay did not begin just with the military coup of 1973, but years before, even when there was still a government with a constitution and parliament.

Pol Pot carried out through the years enormous purges against his own followers because of his paranoia.