When the slow, cautious expansion eventually took place, constant efforts were made to reassure Russia. No NATO bases were placed in the new member s… - Anne Applebaum

Although... most often used to describe and Stalin's Soviet Union, the word "totalitarian"—totalitarismo—was... [i]nvented by one of his critics... and adapted... by Benito Mussolini... [who] offered... the best definition... "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." ...A totalitarian regime ...bans all institutions apart from ...officially approved ...thus has one political party ...educational system ...artistic creed ...centrally planned economy ...unified media, and one moral code. ..."[O]utside of it [the state] no human or spiritual values can exist..."

That moment has passed. Nearly two decades later, I would now cross the street to avoid some of the people who were at my New Year's Eve party. They, in turn, would not only refuse to enter my house, they would be embarrassed to admit they had ever been there. In fact, about half the people who were at that party would no longer speak to the other half. The estrangements are political, not personal. Poland is now one of the most polarized societies in Europe, and we have found ourselves on opposite sides of a profound divide,

[T]he living memory of the USSR is now truly fading and the nature of the USSR—its peculiar awfulness, its criminality, its stupidity—is becoming harder and harder to explain.