Michael Dickmann

“Under Leonid Brezhnev’s inflexible brand of Communism, paranoia had increased to near Stalinist levels, creating a spy state pitting all against all, in which phones were tapped and letters opened, and everyone was encouraged to inform on everyone else, everywhere, all the time. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the resulting spike in international tension, had intensified KGB internal scrutiny. “Fear by night, and a feverish effort by day to pretend enthusiasm for a system of lies, was the permanent condition of the Soviet citizen,” writes Robert Conquest.”
― Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

“convince them that they were in imminent danger of assassination by Soviet hitmen, and offer a “temporary hiding place.” If they refused to come voluntarily, they would be subdued using “special substances,”
― Ben Macintyre, The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

“Some argue that we see a man with the head of a bird and an erect penis, being killed by a bison.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind