"It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts"
About this Quote
Crisis is when power most wants obedience, and Yeltsin flips that reflex into a virtue: the state’s survival depends on letting people think out loud, even badly, even inconveniently. The line is built like an argument against panic. “Unorthodox” isn’t a romantic nod to rebels; it’s framed as a practical resource, the thing you ration least when everything else is scarce. By calling new ideas “more precious than gold,” he borrows the language of hard currency and emergency reserves, recoding free thought as an economic necessity rather than a liberal luxury.
The subtext is sharper. In a system trained to treat dissent as sabotage, “every new word” reads like a quiet indictment of decades of Soviet political culture, where words were policed and imagination was suspect. Yeltsin’s insistence that people “must not be deprived” signals an awareness that deprivation is exactly what states do in critical moments: clamp down on media, narrow debate, demand unity. He’s preemptively arguing with the authoritarian impulse inside the crisis manager.
Context matters because Yeltsin isn’t a dissident writing from the margins; he’s a leader trying to legitimate rupture. Whether aimed at late-Soviet stagnation, the upheaval of the early 1990s, or the violent tests of the new Russian state, the quote functions as a rhetorical crowbar: it pries open space for pluralism by casting it as emergency equipment. It’s also self-justification. If the coming decisions look chaotic, he’s saying, remember: chaos is sometimes the price of thinking in real time.
The subtext is sharper. In a system trained to treat dissent as sabotage, “every new word” reads like a quiet indictment of decades of Soviet political culture, where words were policed and imagination was suspect. Yeltsin’s insistence that people “must not be deprived” signals an awareness that deprivation is exactly what states do in critical moments: clamp down on media, narrow debate, demand unity. He’s preemptively arguing with the authoritarian impulse inside the crisis manager.
Context matters because Yeltsin isn’t a dissident writing from the margins; he’s a leader trying to legitimate rupture. Whether aimed at late-Soviet stagnation, the upheaval of the early 1990s, or the violent tests of the new Russian state, the quote functions as a rhetorical crowbar: it pries open space for pluralism by casting it as emergency equipment. It’s also self-justification. If the coming decisions look chaotic, he’s saying, remember: chaos is sometimes the price of thinking in real time.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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