I don't think Russia will follow the United States's way. I don't think Russia will follow the French way. I'm sure Russia will find its own way.

I joined the city government, and we start to operate as the bureaucrats on the local level, so we were the only ones in the whole Russian team who were experienced in practical bureaucratic management in the complicated condition of 1990.

I'm communicating with the directors of the Soviet companies, and I see that it is wrong, but when I go to the official discussions, they discuss we should change the color of the walls.

During the election in 1989, there was the first Soviet election with alternative candidates to local government. I myself arranged special training for them.

Each university should have a Young Scholars' Committee. I became the chairman of this Committee, and immediately it was permitted to have this plan officially adopted.

These guys were the real owners of the country, and for them to discuss with this young guy who becomes a member of the government was absolutely unacceptable.

It was almost forbidden in the Soviet Union to study the New Economic Policy.

The red directors were one of the main political forces. Another force was the former Soviet ministers who lost everything because of the transformation of the Soviet Union to Russia.

There was the scientific and technical progress which couldn't be predicted by the state.

For the producers, there was no reason to produce. You get money, but you couldn't use this money. For consumers, you could have money, but you have no way to use it because you go to the shop and see nothing.

You're never able to please everybody, especially when you're transforming a country like Russia.

I am joining the government not from the academic position but from St. Petersburg city council.

The diversification of the people's demand could not be followed by the state apparatus.

There are no two countries with the same style of economic mechanism, with the same capitalism.

In 1995 the whole political situation was very complicated. I was the first deputy prime minister, and at the same time I had very low influence in the government.

For the whole of Western Europe, I know the business community quite good.

There was no doubt that sooner or later we will fight. But we will fight not in the way of the dissidents' protests. We understood that we needed to be as professional as possible.

Russia should support globalization. The Internet can develop in Russia in a very speedy way.

Bill Gates finds people in Russia to hire them to Microsoft. That's the Russian interest in this process.

I went to government for making these changes. I remember a number of guys among these important figures.

Private property is a very fundamental and very long-term institution.

The kind of capitalism I hate most is crony capitalism, the friends who decide. These are things which should be killed in Russia.

Killing the private property-that was the center of the Marxist economy and Marxist ideology. That was the center of the Lenin ideology.

There is a state that is able to understand the demand in the economy. That state should use prices as an instrument for implementation of this understanding.

I don't think Russia will follow the United States's way. I don't think Russia will follow the French way. I'm sure Russia will find its own way.

The Bolsheviks started not just on the killing of private property; they were trying to abolish money itself.

You need to find somebody who will speak the same language. We understand that we couldn't have any kind of discussion without permission, without a legal framework behind it.

The directors thought, They understand nothing in the real economy, in real life. They read some stupid books, and they came from the moon to the earth, and maybe in one month they will disappear.

If I just produce the transparent ideal accepted by the Western experts, a process of privatization which will be very good but never happen, that means nothing.

Money is the kind of instrument which is very speedily produced.

You're not always able to choose.

Russia can be quite a dangerous place sometimes, but I never think about it.

The way the business things work in Russia is you have to meet people, you have to go through a certain amount of etiquette and business things are done just simply by a shake of the hand and whether they like you or not.

If Russia rises, it means that the USA falls down.

Men who are scandalized at the lack of freedom in Russia do not ask themselves how real is liberty among the poor, the weak, and the ignorant in capitalist society.

When I was 12, every little girl in Russia was trying to wear her hair like mine and playing tennis.

My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.

I think there is a good deal of promise in those discussions as well. I think there is a range of matters that might be discussed between NATO and Russia that can provide a mechanism for talking through these issues, a way to give reassurance on these issues.

In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.

There is an enormous difference between Russia and Western Europe.

Russia also declared its independence. This was approved by the Supreme Soviet, and you know and remember that there was the Declaration on the Independence of Russia.

Ours is a country built more on people than on territory. The Jews will come from everywhere: from France, from Russia, from America, from Yemen... Their faith is their passport.

We, Russia, are prepared to work with others. I am convinced that stability and security in Europe cannot be considered without taking Russia into account.

I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place.

And look at the mess that Russia is; most Chinese don't want to follow that.

Russia knows of the vulnerability of her frontiers in this part of the world.

The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia.

Time passed by. I had furnished steam hammers to the principal foundries in England. I had sent them abroad, even to Russia. At length it became known to the Lords of the Admiralty that a new power in forging had been introduced.

It is important to remember that some of the most serious thinkers once thought that democracy was not compatible with the cultures of Germany, Italy, Japan, Latin America and Russia.