Leonid Brezhnev Quotes

We regard the improvement of Soviet-American relations not as an isolated phenomenon, but as an integral — and very important — part of the wider process of radically improving the international atmosphere. Mankind has outgrown the rigid "cold war" armor which it was once forced to wear. It wants to breathe freely and peacefully. And we will be happy if our efforts to better Soviet-American relations help draw more and more nations into the process of détente — be it in Europe or Asia, in Africa or Latin America, in the Middle or the Far East.

We stand for the dismantling of foreign military bases. We stand for a reduction of armed forces and armaments in areas where military confrontation is especially dangerous, above all in central Europe.

When external and internal forces hostile to the development of socialism try to turn the development of a given socialist country in the direction of the restoration of the capitalist system, when a threat arises to the cause of socialism in that country … this is no longer merely a problem for that country's people, but a common problem, the concern of all socialist countries.

The most important thing in my life, its leitmotif, has been the constant and close contacts with working people, with workers and peasants.

Every man must be made to realize that further retreat is impossible. He must realize with his mind and heart that this is a matter of life and death of the Soviet state, of the life and death of the people of our country...the Nazi troops must be stopped now, before it is too late.

Our militant union with peoples which still have to carry on an armed struggle against the colonialists constitutes an important element of our line in international affairs.

Today progress is so swift in all fields that the education received by young people is only a foundation that requires the constant acquisition of knowledge.

Modern production sets rapidly rising demands not only on machines, on technology, but also and primarily on the workers, on those who create these machines and control this technology. For ever larger segments of workers specialised knowledge and a high degree of professional training, man’s general cultural standard, are becoming an obligatory condition of successful work.

December 30, 1922, is a truly historic date in the life of our state, an important milestone in the life of all the Soviet peoples, their great festival.

It stands to the Party’s credit that millions upon millions of Soviet men of every nation and nationality have adopted internationalism—once the ideal of a handful of Communists—as their deep conviction and standard of behaviour. This was a true revolution in social thinking, and one which it is hard to overestimate.

Successes in socialist construction largely depend on the correct combination of the general and the nationally specific in social development. Not only are we now theoretically aware but also have been convinced in practice that the way to socialism and its main features are determined by the general regularities, which are inherent in the development of all the socialist countries. We are also aware that the effect of the general regularities is manifested in different forms consistent with concrete historical conditions and national specifics. It is impossible to build socialism without basing oneself on general regularities or taking account of the concrete historical specifics of each country. Nor is it possible without a consideration of both these factors correctly to develop relations between the socialist states.

We want the world socialist system to be a well-knit family of nations, building and defending the new society together, and mutually enriching each other with experience and knowledge, a family, strong and united, which the people of the world would regard as the prototype of the future world community of free nations.

Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, revisionists and opportunists reflect the pressure of nonproletarian, bourgeois and petty-bourgeois strata, the pressure that results from the force of habit, from the views and vestiges of the past, particularly those that are nationalistic.

One of our primary tasks is to foster in people a desire to attain lofty social goals, to foster in them ideological conviction and a truly creative attitude to work. This is a very important area of struggle for communism, and the economic as well as the socio-political development of the country will be increasingly dependent on our successes in this area.

The defeat of Nazi Germany signified the victory of progress over reaction, humanity over barbarism and the victory of socialism over imperialist obscurantism. This victory opened the road for advancing the revolutionary struggle of the working class, a national liberation movement on an unprecedented scale and the destruction of the shameful colonial system.