Lack Initiative Quote by Sheila Fitzpatrick

“Soviet officials frequently complained about the “dependent” habits of Homo Sovieticus, his lack of initiative, and his stubborn expectation that the state would and…

— Sheila Fitzpatrick

“When reason, common sense, and decency are assaulted often enough, then personality is crippled, and human intelligence disintegrates or is warped. The barrier between…

— Frank Ellis

“The Soviet state was, in fact, almost perfectly designed to make people unhappy. It denied its citizens not just hope, but also trust. Every…

— Oliver Bullough

For them (the peoples of the Soviet Union) We cherish the warmest paternal affection. We are well aware that not a few of them…

— Pope Pius XI

“[I]n the interests of our common tasks, we must sometimes overlook their stupidities,” one Soviet official explained in 1973.”

— John Lewis Gaddis

“The Soviet regime robbed people not only of their ability to live freely but also of the ability to understand fully what had been…

— Masha Gessen

The Soviet government sprouted and grew out of the habits, the psychology, and the condition of the Russian people. It fitted them. They understand…

— Lincoln Steffens

“If the immediate postwar period had been characterized by violent attacks on the existing institutions of civil society, after 1948 the regimes [of Eastern…

— Anne Applebaum

“Every time this happened, some arbitrarily chosen scapegoats were punished for overzealousness in carrying out the old policy. These were circumstances that encouraged fatalism…

— Sheila Fitzpatrick

Even now, the irony that so non-intellectual a man should choose to engage the Soviet Union on the battlefield of ideas has eluded most…

— Richard Perle

Resignation was the defining condition of Soviet life.

— Masha Gessen

“If political scientists couldn’t predict the downfall of the Soviet Union—perhaps the most important event in the latter half of the twentieth century—then what…

— Nate Silver