Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Remembering the Cold War

The ambition to conquer the world has two different sources in the mental equipment of Soviet leaders. One is the classic, traditional, permanent image of "world revolution," the certainty that all humanity is destined to become Communist. The other is the sense of the Communist system's inherent fragility, shown by the tendency of all peoples under its yoke to try to evade it or shake it off whenever a crack in the wall of police repression gives them a chance.

- From How Democracies Perish by Jean-François Revel (1983)

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