“The collapse of the Soviet Union, a state which appeared as solidly entrenched to us as the tsarist Empire did in its day, was not triggered by social unrest: there were no strike waves, no massive demonstrations, no widespread violence. The USSR disintegrated because of political decisions made at the top.”
Source: Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution (1995), p. 14
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Richard Pipes 46
American historian 1923–2018Related quotes
“They didn't begin telling the truth in the Soviet Union until after it collapsed, did they?”
Reported in Didi Kirsten Tatlow, "A System Afraid of Its Own History", The New York Times (September 16, 2010).

Mills was invited to speak in the Soviet Union as an honored guest, due to his criticisms of economies in the West; he was asked to make a toast at a banquet, and in his contrarian way, toasted Trotsky, whose works had been banned in the Soviet Union by Stalin. Reported in Saul Landau, "C. Wright Mills: The Last Six Months", Ramparts (August 1965), p. 49-50.
1960s

Source: The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century, (2000), p. 13

As quoted in Selected Speeches and Writings (1980) edited by Mikhail Andreevich Suslov
Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

Interview with Charles Krauthammer: America's "Great Success Story", in Middle East Quarterly (December 1994) http://www.danielpipes.org/6305/charles-krauthammer-americas-great-success-story
1990s, 1994
Context: Communism always had sympathetic Westerners who amounted to a fifth column, including communist parties and intellectuals. Its appeal made it a double threat, internal and external. In the old days, communist parties were on the verge of getting parliamentary majorities in some European countries. That threat doesn't exist with Islam. The fundamentalists have nothing like that demographic or political import, even in Europe. The Muslim population in America is not much fundamentalist, nor radicalized. Rather, it accepts American religious pluralism and lives, like other religions, in a quite harmonious and pluralistic way.
Of all the ideologies remaining in the world in the debris of the collapsed Soviet empire, fundamentalist Islam is the only one that, at least in our lifetime, appears to pose a serious problem to the West. It's the only expressly anti-Western ideology of any importance in the world and it means to destroy the Western position, Western institutions, Western culture, wherever it can. This occurred in Iran, and will happen again in Algeria. Should fundamentalists take power in Egypt, there will be profound geopolitical consequences. A region very important to us will be destabilized, with many problems resulting. Once that happens, we'll be asking ourselves why we weren't worrying about this years ago.

"Горбачев сказал нам: "Действуйте, как хотите" " https://ytro.news/articles/2007/08/20/672987.shtml