Putin probably, almost certainly, thinks that one of the great disasters of the 20th century was the demise of the Soviet Union. It's very obvious that he's trying to work its way back and maintain something similar to that sort of institution.
Also a great part of Polish industry proved to have existed only to support the Soviet military industry, and it became superfluous and incapable of being transformed into anything else. We did not foresee that or the magnitude of these phenomena.
The one great exception to the apathy on reunification is, naturally enough, Berlin. Encircled by the hostile Soviet Zone for ten years, at times blockaded and constantly at the Russians' mercy, Berliners are committed to this one goal with a unique ...
We're going to have to forgive a great deal of the Soviet era debt. There's no question about that. Let's face up to that. We're going to have to put in money if Russia is really going to consolidate a democracy.
The case of Afghanistan vs. the Soviet Union is the clearest case of good against evil that I've seen in my lifetime. I thought it was terrific the way they got their country back.
I never thought I'd see the day when the U.S. government could listen in on phone conversations or read private mail without first obtaining a warrant from a court. That sounds more like something that happened in the Soviet Union.
There was no testimony of conspiracy - Oswald's efforts to get in touch with the Soviets and with the Cuban Fair Play groups in New York were rebuffed, rebuffed at every step.
It's essential for the U.S. and Europe to prevent Putin from going farther and reversing the hard-won independence of former Soviet republics.
Membership of the United Nations gives every member the right to make a fool of himself, and that is a right of which the Soviet Union in this case has taken full advantage.
New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere.
The Soviet Union has indeed been our greatest menace, not so much because of what it has done, but because of the excuses it has provided us for our failures.
The Soviet Union represents a threat in terms of might. It is a joke in terms of its economy and what it has to offer the Third World - a laughingstock to countries that are looking for an economic-development model.
And I think detente had manifestly failed, and that the pursuit of it was encouraging Soviet expansion and rendering the world more dangerous, and especially rendering the Western world in greater peril.
Ronald Reagan will be remembered for leading the United States during a time of tremendous international transition - the demise of the Soviet Union, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the end of the Cold War.
Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust.
Craig Patrick: Hey, Herb, what's going on? We're playing the Soviets three days before Lake Placid? Herb Brooks: Yeah, how 'bout that?
Turkish: [voice over] Boris the Blade, or Boris "the Bullet Dodger." As bent as the Soviet sickle, and as hard as the hammer that crosses it. Apparently, it's just impossible to kill the bastard.
I believe that detente was having almost the opposite effect of what was intended. What was intended was to sort of end the contest for power and to stop Soviet expansion, especially by military means and the military build-up, the military contest.
I thought that in general we in the United States were too optimistic in believing that the Soviets might alter what had been for a long time, as a matter of fact for centuries, fundamental Russian policies in respect to the rest of the world.
The People's Republic of China has not yet reached the military might of the Soviet Empire. It requires a little more time and a little more infusion of Western aid, loans, technology and the hard currency of our tourists.
Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America's self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.
