Sometimes its difficult to accept, to recognise ones own mistakes, but one must do it. I was guilty of overconfidence and arrogance, and I was punished for that.

We are beginning to see practical support. And this is a very significant sign of the movement towards a new era, a new age.... We see both in our country and elsewhere... ghosts of the old thinking.... When we rid ourselves of their presence, we will be better able to move toward a new world order...relying on the relevent mechanisms of the United Nations.

It will be difficult, even painful, but democracy will prevail in Russia. There will be no dictatorship, although relapses into authoritarianism are possible.

We used to have just one criterion and that was profit, and then another criterion was added - social welfare. Now we have to add the third important criterion, and that is nature and the environment.

Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans and let them fall asleep.

You cannot go to sleep with one form of economic system and wake up the next morning with another.

What happened to the Soviet Union happened mainly for domestic reasons. It was a failure of the model based on a command economy and dictatorship. The rejection of freedom and democracy, the decisionmaking monopoly of one party, and the monopoly of one ideology all had a chilling effect on the country. That model turned out to be incapable of making structural changes. It did not open up ways for initiative and was overly centralized.