Political Repression in The Soviet Union

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:

    “In the Soviet Union everything happens slowly. Always remember that.”
    —A.N. (Arkady N.)

    “I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.... It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
    —Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    “Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.”
    —Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)

    “They were right. The Soviet régime is not the embodiment of evil as you think in the West. They have laws and I broke them. I hate tea and they love tea. Who is wrong?”
    —Alexander Zinoviev (b. 1922)

    “If the Union is now dissolved it does not prove that the experiment of popular government is a failure.... But the experiment of uniting free states and slaveholding states in one nation is, perhaps, a failure.... There probably is an “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. It may as well be admitted, and our new relations may as be formed with that as an admitted fact.”
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)