Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes

Vladimir Lenin. While Lenin was of this view, Stalin and other hard liners disagreed. They not only imposed their brand of communism on their own people via force with terrible consequences for any dissidents, but the Soviet Army imposed Communism on most of the states of Eastern Europe, and those states in turn used their Armies and secret police to impose it on their own citizens.

There was a major policy split between Secretary of State Colin Powell and the Vice President / Secretary of Defense. The latter, together with a number of neoconservatives, had been advocating invasion of Iraq and aggressive use of the military. Virtually all of these advocates had never served in the military and had no experience with war. Secretary Powell, in contrast, fought in Vietnam, was a General in the Gulf War, and served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Wilkerson, his Chief of Staff at the State Department was also a senior military officer who had seen war and sent men into battle. They were much more reluctant to use military power unless the nation's vital interest demanded it. Hence, the quotation.

Indeed, many of the countries went communist as Kennan predicted.

The British suspected that the Turks of Anatolia were complicit with Bolshevism

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

At the end of WWII there was much tension between Russia and the Anglo-American alliance. This plan was developed but never implemented. See {613195} for Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s description of the invasion idea.

The non-communist forces of China were always struggling with each other for power. Attempts by non-communist reformers were defeated by autocrats, warlords, major landlords, and various religions organizations and denominations which were all fighting each other.

Vladimir Lenin. The two American leftists had been deported from America. Lenin and the Russian leadership was delighted to have these two famous radicals, and they thought they would find Russia wonderful. But soon the Americans discovered that the freedoms that they found so critical did not, and would not, exist in Communist Russia. After two years, they left Russia for Canada and Europe where they wrote and castigated Communist Russia to the delight of their old American enemies and the shock of many of their old American friends. Lenin was glad to be rid of them. They were as much of a threat to his regime as they were to the United States of the time.

Truman had to deal with Stalin for many years and over time he became more and more soured on the Russians. See {626411} for his view 22 years later,

This quotation illustrates White’s extreme naivety about Stalinist Russia. At the time the Soviet Union had been backing communist insurgencies blatantly in China, Greece, and Korea for example. Most historians agree that White passed classified information to the Russians. He was accused of being a Communist, but there was never any evidence of that. Some people believe that he was a spy for the Russians and committed espionage, but others disagree observing that White was very much his own man and felt that much information that was classified never should have been. White substituted his own judgment, it is believed, about what could be given to the Russians. He was an admirer of what Russian socialism had accomplished economically, educationally and medically since the 1917 revolution deposing the Czar. Russia had been a valuable military ally, which had taken the brunt of both military and civilian casualties in WWII. White’s economics were certainly not Marxist but very much Keynesian. He was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee where he was accused of being a Communist which he denied (see {634907}). He died of a heart attack 3 days later.

This is an example of what made the Cold War so difficult. The Italian Communists had great misgivings about the Russian version of Communism that tended to abuse human rights and try and control other countries. However, when the Russian Communists were under world attacks by the West, as with their incursion into Hungary, he urged that all the Communists stick together and defend the Russians even for policies that they thought wrong. On the West side, the same thing occurred. The United States tolerated and supported a number of terribly oppressive dictatorships that were virulently anti-Communist. Polarization was the international norm.

After the 1917 Russian Revolution many of the Western Countries sent troops to Russia where they aided the Whites against the Reds. When the Red Bolsheviks prevailed, there were many attempts to diplomatically and economically undermine the Communist government. This caused a unity among different Russian factions. Sforza urged leaving them alone and letting the Bolsheviks fail by their own ideology. Most Western nations and the United States did not agree with him.

William V, Prince of Orange, was a very hapless monarch of Holland who was ineffective in dealing with revolutionary discontent despite help and support of England. The King of England was resigned to Holland becoming, like France, a Republic. The English statesmen and diplomats, while aiding William, were also secretly providing money and other assistance to the Patriot rebels, to ensure good relations with the Dutch republican leaders.

Khrushchev did not originate this quotation. It was first stated by Lenin. See {620087}.

The issue of unilateral or multilateral foreign policy efforts faced America after WWII.