“You have to ask yourself, 'What was the desire of the people who, after more than 40 years of Soviet oppression, became free?' They didn’t want to be pawns between a residual West that ended somewhere on the borders of the old West Germany and a resurgent Russia. They wanted to be part of the democratic West and, eventually, of the European Union. Those are perfectly legitimate aspirations. This is no threat to Russia –- except to those Russians who cannot conceive of Russia as anything else but a dominant empire that rules not only over the Russian people but over those adjoining Russian territory.”

— Zbigniew Brzeziński

Interview in The Huffington Post - NATO Should Stop Putin From Restoring Czarist Empire, Zbigniew Brzezinski Says http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/03/zbigniew-brzezinski-nato-putin-ukraine_n_5760068.html (September 3, 2014). Commenting on criticisms of NATO expansion to Eastern Europe.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "You have to ask yourself, 'What was the desire of the people who, after more than 40 years of Soviet oppression, became…" by Zbigniew Brzeziński?

Zbigniew Brzeziński 35

Polish-American political scientist 1928–2017

Related quotes

“Everything I undertake is directed against Russia. If the West is too stupid and blind to grasp this, then I shall be compelled to come to an agreement with Russia, beat the West and then after their defeat turn against the Soviet Union with all my forces.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Discussion with Jacob Burckhardt, League of Nation commissioner. Quoted in Norman Rich, Hitler's War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi State, and the Course of Expansion pg. 126 https://books.google.com/books?id=1nPPbpXUZA0C&pg=PA126&dq=hitler+is+against+russia+the+west&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR3PP6n5bXAhVC6CYKHTKJB3EQ6AEISjAG#v=onepage&q=hitler%20is%20against%20russia%20the%20west&f=false
1930s

“The West is an oasis for criminals from Russia.”

Dmitry Peskov (1967) Russian politician

"Песков назвал Запад оазисом для преступников" https://ria.ru/20220403/zapad-1781539233.html (in Russian; "Peskov called the West an oasis for criminals"), interview in RIA Novosti, 3 April 2022
CNN Interview (March 2022)

“Hitler never intended to defend ‘the West’ against Bolshevism but always remained ready to join ‘the Reds’ for the destruction of the West, even in the middle of the struggle against Soviet Russia.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Part 3, Ch. 1 § 1.
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)

“With Yeltsin, the Soviet Union broke apart, the country was totally mismanaged, the constitution was not respected by the regions of Russia. The army, education and health systems collapsed. People in the West quietly applauded, dancing with and around Yeltsin. I conclude therefore that we should not pay too much attention to what the West is saying.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in USA Today (5 April 2006)
1990s

“The world and history will take from Russia much more than Russian missiles will take from Ukraine. Every lost life is an argument for Ukrainians and other free nations to perceive Russia exclusively as a threat generation after generation.”

Volodymyr Zelensky (1978) 6th President of Ukraine

2022, We, the world and history will take from Russia much more than Russian missiles will take from Ukraine (18 April 2022)]

“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

BBC Radio broadcast, Russian service, as quoted in The Listener (15 February 1979).

“Suppose Russia falls apart. Thousands of refugees will huddle together at the Finnish border. This is one of the reasons I want Russia to remain a strong power. Who else could be in such a position other than Putin, who in Finland is repeatedly painted black as a monster?”

Hannu Salama (1936) Finnish writer

“Russia ... our natural ally against the fiendish temptation and corruption from the West.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Rußland ... der uns von Natur gegebene Bundesgenosse gegen die teuflische Versuchung und Korruption des Westens ist. Source: National Socialist Letters (Nationalsozialistische Briefe), “National Socialism or Bolshevism”, (November 15, 1925), quoted in: Ralph Georg Reuth, Goebbels, Piper, 2nd ed., Munich, 1991, p. 96. ISBN 3-492-03183-8.
1920s

“The West has declared war on us, on the whole Russian world. The culture of canceling Russia and everything connected with our country is already reaching the point of absurdity.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

About the Russian invasion of Ukraine 2022

“Studying Russian history from the West European perspective, one also becomes conscious of the effect that the absence of feudalism had on Russia. Feudalism had created in the West networks of economic and political institutions that served the central state, once it replaced the feudal system, as a source of social support and relative stability. Russia knew no feudalism in the traditional sense of the word, since, after the emergence of the Muscovite monarchy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, all landowners were tenants-in-chief of the Crown, and subinfeudation was unknown. As a result, all power was concentrated in the Crown.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Three “Whys” of the Russian Revolution (1995), pp. 17-18

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Zbigniew Brzeziński 35

Related quotes

Related topics