The Secret World Quotes

“The Sukhomlinov effect’: the principle that there is an inverse correlation between the attention a general pays to his uniforms and his military skill.”
― Christopher Andrew, The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

“The Cheka’s early priorities were overwhelmingly domestic. It was, said Dzerzhinsky, ‘an organ for the revolutionary settlement of accounts with counter-revolutionaries’, a label increasingly applied to all the Bolsheviks’ opponents and ‘class enemies’.”
― Christopher M. Andrew, The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

“We are not waging war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. During investigation, do not look for evidence that the accused acted in word or deed against Soviet power. The first questions that you ought to put are: ‘To what class does he belong? What is his origin? What is his education or profession?’ And it is these questions that ought to determine the fate of the accused. In this lies the significance and essence of the Red Terror.”
― Christopher M. Andrew, The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

“The Legislative Assembly’s decision in April 1792 to declare war on Austria did even more than religious conflict to radicalize the Revolution. The combination of foreign war and internal conflict turned France into the world’s first police state, committed to the surveillance and repression of all opposition. Pressure for its creation came less from revolutionary leaders than from popular hysteria in Paris, whipped up by conspiracy theories of a secret alliance between enemies abroad and counter-revolutionary traitors at home. Many believed that Louis XVI and the Austrian-born Marie-Antoinette were part of an aristocratic plot to join forces with the invading Austrian army and its Prussian allies”
― Christopher M. Andrew, The Secret World: A History of Intelligence

“The chairman of the KGB, Yuri Andropov (later Soviet leader), told a KGB conference in 1979: ‘We simply do not have the right to permit the smallest miscalculation here, for in the political sphere any kind of ideological sabotage is directly or indirectly intended to create an opposition to our system . . .”
― Christopher M. Andrew, The Secret World: A History of Intelligence