Soviet Leader Quotes

[Khrushchev] should get a one-ton medal.

He [Mikhail Gorbachev] has, as many great leaders have, impressive eyes....There's a kind of laser-beam stare, a forced quality, you get from Gorbachev that does not come across as something peaceful within himself. It's the look of a kind of human volcano, or he'd probably like to describe it as a human nuclear energy plant.

Asked if Stalin was an antisemite, Robert Conquest replied: Yes, but it hardly noticed. He was broadly and generously anti-human.

Stalin was born Joseph Dzhugashvili in 1878 in Gori, Georgia, on the periphery of the Russian Empire. His father was a hard-drinking cobbler whose relationship with Joseph's mother, Keke Geladze, came to an end when the boy was around six years old.

One of the surprising things that Brezhnev said when we were in our talks, was - when I proposed that we make these changes in nuclear weaponry, he said, "God will never forgive us if we don't succeed." And, you know, coming from the leader of an atheistic communist country, this surprised everyone.

Stalin is the most popular figure in all of Russia.

When I was 5-years-old, I knew who Khrushchev was.

... the dynamic architect of Soviet reform.

I got very well acquainted with Joe Stalin, and I like old Joe! He is a decent fellow. But Joe is a prisoner of the Politburo.

Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live.

Leonid Breznev was an old man and despite his own military experience in World War II, he on the other hand was not very close to the military.

The workers love Khrushchev very much. He hasn't got an enemy in the entire country. Quite a few under it.

In the struggle to defend the legacy of Leninism . . . [Stalin] proved himself to be an outstanding Marxist-Leninist fighter. . . . Stalin's works should, as before, be seriously studied . . . [to] see what is correct and what is not.

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

Mr. Gorbachev initiated Glasnost, Perestroika, so he was already, you know, way disenchanted with the rigid Communist ideology, and he was looking to become an international leader. He was more accepted actually outside of the Communist Soviet Union than inside.

It is a modern tragedy that one of the Soviet Union's most intelligent and realistic leaders has served and died during the administration of the most ill-informed and dangerous man ever to occupy the White House.

The Russians love Brooke Shields because her eyebrows remind them of Leonid Brezhnev.

N. S. Khrushchev established his supremacy in the U.S.S.R. after post-Stalinist alarums and excursions (1958-64). This admirable rough diamond, a believer in reform and peaceful coexistence, who incidentally emptied Stalin's concentration camps, dominated the international scene in the next few years. He was also perhaps the only peasant boy ever to rule a major state

I rather liked Stalin and Molotov, got along fine with them.

I ALWAYS LIKED MR STALIN.