But the Party had declared merciless war on drinking and that’s why those two remarkable party leaders had to confine themselves to the most trivial … - Alexander Zinoviev

It is so natural in trying to understand the phenomena of human life to have recourse to notions of historicism that the very fact of wanting to question them seems sacrilegious. Some people think that we can only understand communist society in its essence from a historical point of view, that is to say by considering the history of its formation. Authentic history, that goes without saying, and not the falsified history practiced by pro-communist historians and philosophers. According to them, the course of events, the way in which this society was constituted is sufficient to explain nature. p. 39

...the political class of Western society reminded me in a striking way of what I had had the opportunity to observe for several years, as in the laboratory, in Soviet Russia. It's a bit as if Soviet society had divulged secrets that remain hidden in Western society and that are not spoken out loud. p. 161

The problem with slavery is not why people are forced to become slaves, but why they allow themselves to be enslaved. p. 67