Nobody wants to die, everybody wants to live, but the Russians want to rebuild a Russian empire and we don’t want to live in a Russian empire. The Russians try to put us on our knees, but we’re fighting right now for freedom and for the future of our children and our country.

Sure, I hear about the new freedom that people are enjoying in Eastern Europe. But how do you define freedom? Millions of people in Eastern Europe are now free from employment, free from safe streets, free from health care, free from social security. What is happening to people in the former Soviet Union is a catastrophe. Even without idealizing what they had before, you have to admit that it was a lot better than what they have now.

We Great-Russian workers want, come what may, a free and independent, a democratic, republican and proud Great Russia, one that will base its neighbors on the human principle of equality, and not on the feudalist principle of privilege, which is so degrading to a great nation.

Among other things it has been stated in the American press that I was very happy to leave Russia, and that I preferred exile in Germany to freedom in Russia. This statement attributed to me, is a deliberate lie! It is true that the hypocrisy, intolerance, and the treachery of the Bolsheviks arouse in me a, feeling of indignation and revolt, but, as an Anarchist, I have no admiration nor defence for any government of any land, and the statement that I prefer exile in Germany rather than freedom in Russia is ridiculous and false. I made it very clear to the press correspondent with whom I spoke that in spite of all the difficulties with which I had to put up with in Russia, I was deeply grieved when I was forced to leave that country. This was not true when I left America. Although I have my entire family, good comrades and many dear friends in the U.S.A. Yet, when I was deported from there by the capitalist government, my heart was light. It was not so in the case of Russia. Never have I felt so depressed as since I have been sentenced to exile from Russia. My love for Russia and its people is too deep for me to rejoice that I am an exile, especially at a time when they are undergoing extreme suffering and most severe persecution. On the contrary, I would prefer to be there, and together with the workers and peasants, search for a way to loosen the chains of Bolshevik tyranny...No, I am NOT happy to be out of Russia. I would rather be there helping the workers combat the tyrannical deeds of the hypocritical Communists

freedom the masses crave is not freedom of self-expression and self-realization, but freedom from the intolerable burden of an autonomous existence. They want freedom from “the fearful burden of free choice,”19 freedom from the arduous responsibility of realizing their ineffectual selves and shouldering the blame for the blemished product. They do not want freedom of conscience, but faith — blind, authoritarian faith. They sweep away the old order not to create a society of free and independent men, but to establish uniformity, individual anonymity and a new structure of perfect unity. It is not the wickedness of the old regime they rise against but its weakness; not its oppression, but its failure to hammer them together into one solid, mighty whole.

Freedom and independence are life or death for us. Because it would be possible to live with people, among people, with a neighbor, in a state where some of your rights are protected. Where the state fulfills its duty to you. It doesn't. Russia does not fulfill any obligations to the people, to the state. So, they simply offer us: They put a wild bear, caught in a forest, in a cage and say : "Go into the cage and live with him, be friends. Give him a paw. Live with this beast and play nice." That's what Russia is.

The Soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.

So long as the Russian Soul, chaotic and full of longing, animated by a strong will yet of weak resolve, exists within the sphere of influence of a Western organism that is conscious of its World-Mission, there will remain in Russia a powerful urge towards reunion with the West. The European Revolution of 1933 found an echo in Russia, and when the European armies entered Bolshevist territory in 1941. They were hailed everyplace there as “liberators.” Marshal Vlasov could have raised armies of millions and affiliated them with the European military forces, but, unfortunately, the European Command did not make use of such aid until it was too late. The possibility indeed exists that a second monstrous upheaval — with a pro-Western Cultural aim — will overthrow the Bolshevist regime. This possibility might be realized either through a renewed Western invasion or through the appearance of a new Peter the Great. It is a further Imponderable. Today Europe must reckon with Russia as part of the Outer Revolt against its World-Mission.

I came out of the Soviet Union no longer a communist, because I believed in personal freedom. Like all Americans, I took for granted the individual liberty to which I had been born. It seemed as necessary and as inevitable as the air I breathed; it seemed the natural element in which human beings lived.

What the people wanted was a government which would provide a comfortable life for them, and with this as the foremost object ideas of freedom and self-reliance and service to the community were obscured to the point of disappearing. Athens was more and more looked on as a co-operative business, possessed of great wealth, in which all citizens had a right to share... Athens had reached the point of rejecting independence, and the freedom she now wanted was freedom from responsibility. There could be only one result... If men insisted on being free from the burden of a life that was self-dependent and also responsible for the common good, they would cease to be free at all. Responsibility was the price every man must pay for freedom. It was to be had on no other terms.

The members of Yabloko only want Russia to become a country in which our children would want to live, from which smart people, intellectuals, entrepreneurs and financiers would not leave abroad. If we'll come to power, we'll achieve that. And if it is necessary for Yabloko to become the conscience of Russia, it will be.

The history of Soviet Russia provides us with a warning here—a warning that without political freedom collectivism can quickly go astray and lead to new forms of oppression and injustice. For political freedom is not merely a noble thing in itself, essential for the full development of human personality—it is also a means of achieving economics rights and social justice, and of preserving these things when they have been won. Where there is no political freedom, privilege and injustice creep back. In Communist Russia 'privilege for the few' is a growing phenomenon, and the gap between the highest and lowest incomes is constantly widening. Soviet Communism pursues a policy of imperialism in a new form—ideological, economic, and strategic—which threatens the welfare and way of life of the other nations of Europe.

The Russians aren't dedicated world dominationists. You know, they just sort of want it on account of a sentimental way, you know, but not like 'By God, we got to have it!' It just doesn't make sense for them to really push too hard, you know, but just to push easy.

all Russia is an immense prison to every Russian of progressive ideas. It is worth everything to the men and women who are working for freedom in Russia to know that free and civilized nations sympathize with them and wish them success.