Masha Gessen Quotes

The Soviet Union was designed for Muscovite rule, not for division into independent republics. Yet the latter is exactly what happened in 1991 - and the Kremlin has never accepted it.

We had in the West a very romantic vision of Russia back in 1991, when the Soviet Union died and whatever is Russia began to emerge. And we began to think of it as a democracy. We're going to bring it into the West. All is going to be wonderful. That was never in the cards.

The red directors were one of the main political forces. Another force was the former Soviet ministers who lost everything because of the transformation of the Soviet Union to Russia.

We expected that people were just waiting for the collapse of the Soviet Union, or at least for its retreat, and they were going to be full of initiative in all areas of life - in culture, in economy and in politics.

I see that not everyone in the West has understood that the Soviet Union has disappeared from the political map of the world and that a new country has emerged with new humanist and ideological principles at the foundation of its existence.

Of course, I know everything that happens in Russia. But even at the most dangerous moment or the most negative moment now, it's still 10 times better than what it was in the communist state.

The Russian drama began at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union mercifully ended. Russia and 14 other new countries emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Every one of those 15 new states faced a profound historical, economic, financial, social and political challenge.

I think we need more young people; we need to elect young people to government. We need to give them a chance, in the media, in politics, in democracy.

Many thought or seemed to think at the time that our young democracy was not a continuation of Russian statehood, but its ultimate collpase.. They were mistaken.

I've travelled to some of the places where Russian language and Russian culture were made part of the fabric of life long before Lenin arrived at Finland Station - and where Russian is now being rolled back, post-1991.

Building up the arms did not cause the fall of Eastern Europe.

In the post-Soviet era, instead of freedom, various stripes of autocratic-totalitarianism have flourished: Russian, Belarusian, Kazakh... We are finding our way out from under the debris of the 'Red Empire' slowly and tentatively.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the television businesses found it was easier to hire 16- or 18-year-olds and teach them everything from the beginning rather than re-teach the old-school folk.

When a new government comes, even the detractors want to give them a chance because they have been voted in by the people of the country.

When you read about the end of the Soviet Union, it's always about the "death of socialism." They never say "the death of democracy." But it makes about the same sense.

Even today, a majority of people surveyed say that they regret the fact that the USSR collapsed. But only 9 percent say that they would want it back.

I will not be standing for office. I'm nearing 70; there are younger people within our movement. I just wish to contribute intellectually to the historic process of taking Tunisia from the era of repression to one of democracy.

The most noticeable thing about the Soviet collapse was that it followed a natural course.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, Reagan and Thatcher displayed Churchillian magnanimity towards Gorbachev's broken nation. Relations were never better. There was no triumphalism.

In Tbilisi in 1990, I recall watching zealous Georgians smash statues of Lenin and Stalin. A few days earlier, though, in Moscow I had been invited to address the Red Army, as one of the first Brits to benefit from Glasnost. The subject they chose: The Cuban Missile Crisis.

When the Soviet Union broke down, Georgia suffered a huge deal. Pretty much the whole of the 90's was known as 'the black decade... because we had a lot of electricity blackouts.

As a civil society, our task is to pressure governments into democratic changes.

It was a very difficult time after the fall of the Soviet Union. Jobs were difficult, and you had to fight to have anything nice.

Any country is either becoming more democratic or less democratic. I think the United States hasn't tended to its journey toward democracy in a long time.

Like so many of my generation and those younger, I have spent most of my life in the E.U., and my instincts were naturally for reform from within.