I consider him [i.e Stalin] one of the greatest persons in the history of mankind. In the history of Russia he was, in my opinion, even greater than … - Alexander Zinoviev

translated from French according to Zoubovitch, Olga. « La démocratie totalitaire dans la pensée d’Alexandre Zinoviev. » Cahiers d'histoire, volume 33, numéro 1-2-spécial, 2015, p. 83–98. URL : https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/histoire/2015-v33-n1-2-sp%C3%A9cial-histoire03364/1042876ar/ d'après :

Stalin is not the creator of Russian tragedy, he was only its expression. p. 340

A western citizen is being brainwashed much more than a soviet citizen ever was during the era of communist propaganda. In ideology, the main thing is not the ideas, but rather the mechanisms of their distribution. The might of the Western media, for example, is incomparably greater than that of the propaganda mechanisms of the Vatican when it was at the zenith of its power. And it is not only the cinema, literature, philosophy – all the levers of influence and mechanisms used in the promulgation of culture, in its broadest sense, work in this direction. At the slightest impulse all who work in this area respond with such consistency that it is hard not to think that all orders come from a single source of power.