Country Quote by John Lewis Gaddis

It was the supreme expressionof the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.

— Leon Trotsky (1879_1940

Soviet foreign policy was influenced only on the margins by communist thinking; Joseph Stalin was a hardcore realist, as were his successors.

— John Mearsheimer

“Stalin perceived the world in stark black and white. In the same way, he divided people, nations, actions, and ideas into only two absolute…

— Anonymous

“Totalitarian regimes, they declared, all had at least five things in common: a dominant ideology, a single ruling party, a secret police force prepared…

— Anne Applebaum

“Stalin is one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. He began as a small clerk, and he has never stopped being a…

— Adolf Hitler

We became convinced that, regardless of Stalin's awful brutality and his reign of terror, he was a great war leader. Without Stalin, they never…

— W. Averell Harriman

Though Stalinism may have been a needless tragedy for both the Russian people and communism as an ideal, there is the intellectually tantalizing possibility…

— Zbigniew Brzezinski

We both agreed that Stalin was determined to hold out against the Germans. He told us he'd never let them get to Moscow. But…

— W. Averell Harriman

“Stalin had developed an interesting new theory: that resistance to socialism increases as its successes mount, because its foes resist with greater desperation as…

— Timothy Snyder

Poland, of course, was the key country. I remember Stalin telling me that the plains of Poland were the invasion route of Europe to…

— W. Averell Harriman

“If Stalin gives you a love advice, it has to succeed.”

— Slavoj Žižek

I remain convinced that for Stalin to have complete centralized power in his hands, he found it necessary to physically destroy the second-largest Soviet…

— James Mace