Mark McDowell

“This “success” had a political price, in Hungary as everywhere else. In practice, nationalization had very little effect on the daily lives of ordinary workers: they were paid the same wages, did the same work, had the same grievances. What difference did it make if their foremen worked for a capitalist or for the Ministry of Industry? Buoyed by consciousness of the rightness of his cause—he was an employee of “the people” after all—a state manager might even be more arrogant than a private owner. Instead of making the communist party more popular, nationalization often made workers more wary and even led in some places to strikes.”
― Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

“In March 1947, he publicly condemned the abolition of religion in all schools, warning that, “promising freedom of religion while creating institutions of irreligiousness is the height of hypocrisy.”
― Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956

“Why did Park Chung-Hee launch his political career in 1961 by lambasting Korean history? Why did he follow up two years later by saying, “Our five thousand years of history was a continuation of degeneration, crudity, and stagnation” and “We should set ablaze all our history that was more like a storehouse of evil”?”
― Chong-Sik Lee, Park Chung-Hee: From Poverty to Power

“Before a nation can be rebuilt, its citizens need to understand how it was destroyed in the first place: how its institutions were undermined, how its language was twisted, how its people were manipulated.”
― Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956