“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 Pipes46

American historian 1923–2018

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“Like so many empires before it, the Soviet Union eventually imploded and fragmented, falling victim not so much to a direct military defeat as to disintegration accelerated by economic and social strains.”

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Source: The Grand Chessboard (1997), Chapter 1, Hegemony Of A New Type, p. 9.

“They didn't begin telling the truth in the Soviet Union until after it collapsed, did they?”

Yuan Tengfei (1972) history teacher in Beijing, China

Reported in Didi Kirsten Tatlow, "A System Afraid of Its Own History", The New York Times (September 16, 2010).

“Here's to the day when the complete works of Leon Trotsky are published and widely distributed in the Soviet Union. On that day the USSR will have achieved democracy!”

C. Wright Mills (1916–1962) American sociologist

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.
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“By the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Marxist theoreticians had begun to evaluate fascism in a totally unanticipated fashion... More than that, as Marxist theorists were compelled to reinterpret fascism in the light of empirical evidence and political circumstances, the fundamental affinities shared by Marxist and fascist regimes became apparent.”

A. James Gregor (1929–2019) American political scientist

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“The rout of fascism, in which the Soviet Union played the decisive role, generated a mighty tide of socio-political changes which swept across the globe.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

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“The Soviet Union and its empire disappeared in large part because its smokestack economy could no longer keep up with the technological progress of the world's major economic powers.”

John Mearsheimer book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

Source: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001), Chapter 6, Great Powers in Action, p. 202

“…empires and civilizations do not collapse because of deficiencies on the military or the political levels.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

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“The Soviet Union was the largest, longest, and most ambitious effort to implement socialism in human history. It was also an evil, totalitarian slave state that survived only by militarizing all of society and sustaining a permanent state of emergency for seven decades. As soon as it began to relax, it collapsed. If socialism failed in its biggest and most intensive effort, there is no strong reason to believe it will succeed elsewhere.”

Paul D. Miller (academic) American academic

Why Socialism Is Bad (2018)

“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.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

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 <br class="br">1990s, 1994 <br class="br">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.<br>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.

“The reason for the collapse of the USSR was only the betrayal of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who were led by the United States. The American administration has always, all the years, strived to destroy the USSR, and now Russia, and take advantage of our wealth.”

Valentin Varennikov (1923–2009) Soviet general and russian politician

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

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