Norman Davies Quotes

The statues of Lenin and Stalin are down, but the fight against their ghosts seems harder.

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.

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

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.

From kindergarten, I knew that politics is something that you talk about only at home, because if you weren't quiet, your parents might be taken to prison. All Estonian families have these kind of stories.

It's bleak behind the Iron Curtain, although they do have the strongest vodka I've ever had in my life.

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 the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything.

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.

The National Socialist Party will prevent in the future, by force if necessary, all meetings and lectures which are likely to exercise a depressing influence on the German state.

They didn't begin telling the truth in the Soviet Union until after it collapsed, did they?

Nothing can excuse the cruelties of Communist Russia, though in the East torture does not provoke revolt as it would in the West.

The U.S.S.R. was a totalitarian state in which judges and prosecutors were controlled by the ruling party. The result was injustice, oppression and corruption.

In their efforts to discredit human freedom, the Putinites denounce the sins that may occur under the reign of liberty with the same ardor, the same sincerity, and the same purpose that animated their Soviet forebears.

Such an atmosphere is un-American, the most un-American thing we have to contend with today. It is the climate of a totalitarian country in which scientists are expected to change their theories to match changes in the police state's propaganda line.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

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

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.

The first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

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.

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.

What is the secret of Stalin's unquestioned strength? He controls every wheel and screw of the party machine, which is the source of authority and power in the Soviet Union.

The worst thing our Communists could do to us, and the thing we have most to fear from their activities, is that we should become like them.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

In Russia, history is often written in pencil so it can be more easily erased.