Anne Applebaum Quotes

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

The real evil of the Russian communist state is not communism. It is the secret police and the concentration camp.

I grew up in a society where everything you did was eavesdropped on, recorded, snitched on. I had friends when we were kids getting into trouble for telling anecdotes about Communist leaders.

I grew up in a dictatorship in East Africa.

Communism feeds on aggression, hatred, and the imprisonment of men's minds and souls. This shall not take root in the United States.

To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable.

Seventy years ago this November, Vladimir Lenin created the modern totalitarian state, transforming simpler forms of tyranny into history's most sophisticated apparatus of rule by terror.

… the inhuman communist police state tyranny

In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values

Since he took power over half a century ago, Fidel Castro proved to be a brutal dictator who must always be remembered by his gross abuses of human rights, systemic exploitation of Cubans, unrelenting repression, and stifling censorship upon his own people.

My mom told me many times how I need to be careful living inside the regime. We didn't say 'the regime.' We didn't even say 'North Korea.'

The North Korean regime really can control people. I think they are the best dictator in the whole planet.

In the Franco era, we couldn't defend our ideas.

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.

In Iraq during the days of Saddam, I had a government minder who followed me everywhere, reported on my activities.

Singling out political opponents for working against the ruling party is precisely the tactic of every tyrannical government from Red China to Venezuela. The first step in the process is creating unfounded public suspicion of political opponents, followed by arresting and jailing any who continue speaking against the regime.

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.

Having spent the greater part of my life under a Communist dictatorship, I am very familiar with the Bolshevik mentality according to which an author in general, and an eminent author in particular, is always guilty, and must be punished accordingly.

I lived under the Nazis and under the Communists.

I should like to underline: no people, no country, in which a Communist dictatorship has been established, ever found its way out of it.

Most Hungarians know what it was to live in a dictatorship; some are old enough to have known both fascism and communism. No one wants to go back to that.

The greatest threat to the security of the people of North Korea comes from the government of North Korea.

As a result of half a century of Soviet rule people have been weaned from a belief in human kindness.

In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.

It is well known that in the Communist countries, and especially in my own, Albania, readers were often called upon to demonstrate their vigilance by detecting and denouncing the 'errors' of authors.