Political Repression In The Soviet Union
Throughout the history of the Soviet Union millions of people became victims of political repression (according to western historiography), which was an instrument of the state since the October Revolution. Culminating during the Stalin era, it still existed during the "Khrushchev Thaw", followed by increased persecution of Soviet dissidents during the Brezhnev stagnation, and didn't cease to exist during Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika. Its heritage still influences the life of modern Russia and other former Soviet states.
Read more about Political Repression In The Soviet Union: Origins and Early Soviet Times, Red Terror, Collectivization, Great Purge, Genocide, Ethnic Cleansing, and Population Transfers, Gulag, Repressions in Annexed Territories, Post-Stalin Era (1953-1991), Loss of Life, Difficulties in Counting The Repressed, Remembering The Victims
Famous quotes containing the words soviet union, political, repression, soviet and/or union:
“Today he plays jazz; tomorrow he betrays his country.”
—Stalinist slogan in the Soviet Union (1920s)
“The general review of the past tends to satisfy me with my political life. No man, I suppose, ever came up to his ideal. The first half [of] my political life was first to resist the increase of slavery and secondly to destroy it.... The second half of my political life has been to rebuild, and to get rid of the despotic and corrupting tendencies and the animosities of the war, and other legacies of slavery.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“People with a culture of poverty suffer much less from repression than we of the middle class suffer and indeed, if I may make the suggestion with due qualification, they often have a hell of a lot more fun than we have.”
—Brian Friel (b. 1929)
“One difference between Nazi and Soviet camps was that in the latter dying was a slower process.”
—Terrence Des Pres (1939–1987)
“My whole working philosophy is that the only stable happiness for mankind is that it shall live married in blessed union to woman-kind—intimacy, physical and psychical between a man and his wife. I wish to add that my state of bliss is by no means perfect.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)