Stansfield Turner Quotes

Starting reforms in the Soviet Union was only possible from above, only from above. Any attempt to go from below was suppressed, suppressed in a most resolute way.

Of course, I know everything that happens in Russia. But even at the most dangerous moment or the most negative moment now, it's still 10 times better than what it was in the communist state.

Perestroika is our last chance. If we stop, it will be our death.

Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that their ideals and beliefs had been shaken.

Few people understand the magnitude of the catastrophe that happened late in the 1980s when the Communist Party had failed to modernize the Soviet Union.

I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.

The essential meaning of perestroika for Gorbachev and his supporters was creating and acting on alternatives to failed and dangerous policies at home and abroad.

We should applaud peristroika but not pay for it.

I would guess that he [Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev] would ultimately fail—that is to say, that he will not be able to reform the Soviet economy. And when that happens, he's likely to be replaced by somebody who will be far more hostile [to the U. S.].

Perestroika and glasnost mean more nationalism, more fascism.

We are witnessing the collapse of Bolshevism.

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

In the Soviet Union, no industry went under until they all did.

The most noticeable thing about the Soviet collapse was that it followed a natural course.

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

Perestroika is nothing more than refined Stalinism.

Today's Russia is not to be compared with the Soviet Union of back then.

I left Russia in 1993 optimistic that democracy had taken hold despite the obstacles.

I was among one of the first entrepreneurs to start building their own private enterprise when Perestroika began in Russia and the state initiated its first market-oriented reforms.

Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.

I started like many young Russian people in the beginning of perestroika when it seemed that everything was possible.

On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union, and within a few weeks the full-scale reformation he attempted to carry out both inside his country and in its cold war relations with the West, particularly the United States, began to unfold.

The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

Glasnost has given us all a headache.

Ever since 1946, all the so-called experts have been yapping about what would happen when Stalin dies and what we as a nation should do about it. We’ll he’s dead, and you can turn the files of our government inside out—in vain—looking for any plans laid. We have no plan. We are not even sure what difference his death makes.