What Is at Stake Now Quotes

“Perhaps I lost as a politician, perhaps my self-confidence played a trick on me because I did not recognize the double threat – from zealots and radicals, and from reactionaries in my immediate surroundings. Nonetheless, perestroika won. A relapse into the past is out of the question.”
― Mikhail Gorbachev, What Is at Stake Now: My Appeal for Peace and Freedom

“As president, I fought for the unity of the country until the very end. I fought by political means – it is important to emphasize this – and I tried to win over Soviet citizens and my colleagues, the leaders of the Union republics. Even today, I believe that the integrity of the country could have been preserved and that a new Union was in everyone's interest. But the coup weakened my position, and the leadership of Russia, the largest republic of the USSR, under Boris Yeltsin decided to dissolve the Soviet Union instead. The country fell apart, the state collapsed.”
― Mikhail Gorbachev, What Is at Stake Now: My Appeal for Peace and Freedom

“When I rose to the leadership of the USSR and looked into the situation of nuclear disarmament negotiations, I was baffled. Negotiations were taking place, diplomats and military officials were meeting regularly. They gave speeches to each other, hundreds of litres of beverages of various strengths were consumed at receptions, and meanwhile the arms race continued, arsenals increased and nuclear testing carried on. There was a terrible inertia, a vicious cycle it was impossible to escape. In the second half of the 1980s, the political leadership of both the USSR and the USA came to the realization that all of this could not go on indefinitely. I see here a parallel to the motto of perestroika: "We can no longer continue to live this way." Despite all the differences of opinion in my discussions on specific issues with Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz, we agreed that the nuclear arms race not only had to be stopped, it had to be reversed.”
― Mikhail Gorbachev, What Is at Stake Now: My Appeal for Peace and Freedom

“Nuclear weapons are like a rifle hanging on the wall in a play. We did not write the play, we are not staging it and we do not know what the author intends. Anyone could take the rifle from the wall at any time.”
― Mikhail Gorbachev, What Is at Stake Now: My Appeal for Peace and Freedom

“The mutual trust that emerged with the end of the Cold War was severely shaken a few years later by NATO's decision to expand to the east. Russia had no option but to draw its own conclusions from that.”
― Mikhail Gorbachev, What Is at Stake Now: My Appeal for Peace and Freedom