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On a battlefield men die quickly, they fight back, they are sustained by fellowship and a sense of duty. Here I saw people dying in solitude by slow degrees, dying hideously, without the excuse of sacrifice for a cause. They had been trapped and left to starve, each in his home, by a political decision made in a far-off capital around conference and banquet tables.

— Victor Kravchenko I Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official (1946)

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More quotes by Victor Kravchenko

I am going to make more hell for the Communists than they dreamed possible.

We Russians are gregarious folk, warm and talkative and quick to kindle in friendship. We wear our hearts on our sleeves. I am no exception in this respect.

I Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official (1946)

Every Soviet organization is a hotbed of personal feuds, competing cliques, festering jealousies. This is almost inevitable in an atmosphere where political skill and influence are the decisive values.

I Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official (1946)

I believe profoundly that in the struggle against Communists and their organizations, in the defense of freedom and justice, we cannot and should not resort to the methods and forms employed by the Communists.

The most terrifying sights were the little children with skeleton limbs dangling from balloon–like abdomens. Starvation had wiped every trace of youth from their faces, turning them into tortured gargoyles; only in their eyes still lingered the reminder of childhood. Everywhere we found men and women lying prone, their faces and bellies bloated, their eyes utterly expressionless.

I Chose Freedom: The Personal and Political Life of a Soviet Official (1946)

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