Xi Jinping 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.

We should applaud peristroika but not pay for it.

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

We were appreciating as early as 1978 that the Soviet economy was in serious trouble. We didn’t make the leap that we should have made – I could have made, that the economic trouble would lead to political trouble. We thought that they would tighten their belt under a Stalin-like regime and continue marching on.

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.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, people thought I wasn't funny anymore.

Twenty years ago, I said there was going to be something that would stop the Soviet Union from taking over the world. And now we see that the Soviet Union has been stopped, through its own disintegration.

I wouldn't even go into the history of the last days of the Soviet Union, the withdrawal from Europe, and what promises were given at that time, because those were oral promises, and our leaders of that time strongly believe that, like in ancient Russia, a word given is better than any treaty.

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

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

I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.

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

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.

Glasnost has given us all a headache.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.

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

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

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

Gorbachev was acutely aware of the [USSR] economic problems, and it was central to all he did. He wanted to change the system in hopes of saving it. In the end he could not.

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

Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.