Boris Yeltsin Quotes

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.

I graduated in 1989, and I'd focused almost entirely on the Soviet Union and communism ... so when the Berlin wall fell, I was, well, I was screwed.

The Iron Curtain may be a thing of the past, but Mother Russia is as mysterious as ever.

Fall of the Berlin wall? Being there was fun. Nations that flaked off of the Soviet Union in southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus? Being there was not so fun.

I see the collapse of the Soviet Union as a great tragedy of the XX century.

The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.

The Soviet Union, and Russia as the successor state to the Soviet Union, is a founding member state of the United Nations and a permanent member of its Security Council.

Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life.

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I was 14 when the wall came down, so I only ever knew about the GDR or experienced it as a kid. I lived very far away from it, and you only ever thought about the GDR when you saw the Olympics, because you were like, "How are they always winning?!"

If the purpose of the wall was to destroy Berlin, Herr Ulbricht and his cohorts have erred sadly. Berlin is not only going to continue to exist - it's going to grow and grow and grow. Its ties to West Germany will not be severed.

Berlin has a uniquely haunting nature, symbolic of a problematic system that was created to oppress and divide a nation.

Before the Berlin Wall came down, we played behind the Iron Curtain and sang, 'Born in the U.S.A.,' and I thought, 'We're all going to die. The man is going to get us all killed.' But then you saw all these kids with the American flag and German flags together and singing the song, and it was, wow, like 'We Shall Overcome.'

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

I was in the Rockin' Vicars, which was the first British band to tour behind the Iron Curtain. A lot of photos were taken of us next to milk churns.

When I was 16, I went to Berlin - West Berlin, since at that time a wall still divided the city - to live for three months with a family on an exchange program.

In Tbilisi in 1990, I recall watching zealous Georgians smash statues of Lenin and Stalin. A few days earlier, though, in Moscow I had been invited to address the Red Army, as one of the first Brits to benefit from Glasnost. The subject they chose: The Cuban Missile Crisis.

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

Poles have a mistrust of the West and an even deeper mistrust of the East.

Certainly my parents were very political, so the whole Berlin Wall thing - and being a kid of the '80s - that's just something that's in your experience.

Thirty years ago, this promise, this allure of democracy, drove hundreds of thousands of people in East Germany onto the streets. What courage they showed! It was these brave people, these peaceful heroes and heroines, who brought the Wall tumbling down.

The Berlin Wall fell because the East Germans saw the West had more. The Koreans don't like the Japanese and try to prove to them that they are worth more in the industrial arena.

I was born in 1988, one year before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and people of my generation were taught that utopian dreams are dangerous.

For people familiar with Eastern Europe, Marci Shore's 'The Taste of Ashes' is, in spite of its subject matter, delicious. A professor at Yale with much experience in Eastern Europe, she writes with great sureness of touch, weaving personal recollections with intellectual commentary and ideas with emotions, including her own.

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