Political Quotes

“if I could say to my friend from Delaware, that is when I became convinced the Soviet Union would not last through the 20th century. When a person of Arkady N. Shevchenko stature defects, it means the system is not working. And it did not work. But when it came apart, there is a proposition in which Owen Harries, in a very fine article in The National Interest, cites British historian Martin Wight who observed that ``Great Power status is lost, as it is won, by violence. A Great Power does not die in its bed.'' Of all the extraordinary events of the 20th century, nothing is more important, more striking than the fact that the Soviet Union and that whole world empire died in bed. There was virtually no bloodshed. The only bloodshed that really took place occurred within the remaining Russian Federation, with its many different languages and regions, when you began to get things like Chechnya and the appearance of a Russian army that clearly was not capable of fairly elementary military operations. I say that is a beleaguered and troubled society.”