Economic Quote by David Hoffman

Mr. Gorbachev has apparently stumbled onto one of the best-kept secrets in recent Soviet history: Communism doesn't work.

— Frank Zappa

I left Gorbachev's office thinking that everything about him was outsized: his achievements, his mistakes, and, now, his vanity and bitterness.

— David Remnick

Scholars have been arguing for a long time whether the Soviet Union could have been turned into some kind of social democracy. I doubt…

— David Hoffman

Gorbachevism, carried out by mediocre but ambitious party bureaucrats, is an attempt not only to outdo the people but also the objective laws of…

— Alexander Zinoviev

Gorbachev gave us freedom of worship and freedom of speech and freedom to see what was going on and freedom to vote, but that…

— Boris Yeltsin

Mr. Gorbachev initiated Glasnost, Perestroika, so he was already, you know, way disenchanted with the rigid Communist ideology, and he was looking to become…

— Deepak Chopra

“One major reason why radical economic reform was almost impossibly difficult to introduce in the Soviet Union was the strength of vested interests –…

— Archie Brown

Reagan's defense buildup and SDI, so ridiculed at the time, pressed Gorbachev, while his economy was collapsing, to make arms deals and improve relations…

— Michael Beschloss

“The reasons for the failure of the Leninist economic model have been studied thoroughly and in the case of North Korea they were essentially…

— Andrei Lankov

“Deng’s judgment about the importance of strong economic growth was later validated by a series of studies of the collapse of the USSR conducted…

— Arthur R. Kroeber

The Soviet system is how everything here works. It's very difficult to break the system. The system is big and inflexible, uneffective, and also…

— Vitali Klitschko

The essential meaning of perestroika for Gorbachev and his supporters was creating and acting on alternatives to failed and dangerous policies at home and…

— Stephen Cohen