UN General Assembly
1948

Those who were playing lightly with the spectre of a new war were playing with fire. Disregarding the opinion of their own people, they were inclined to extend that disregard to cover other peoples. They were wont to forget that the peoples who had survived the last war were not an apathetic mass which one day could be told about the heroic defenders of Stalingrad, and the following day be informed that those same people were responsible for the strained international relations. It might be possible to stage a few unfriendly or even hostile acts, but it was impossible to uproot from the conscience of the nations what would never be forgotten: the contribution which the peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had made for the liberation of humanity from the mortal danger which had loomed over it — enslavement by fascism. No amount of war-propaganda had been able to bring the majority of the people over to the side of a small group of warmongers in their midst. During the hard trials of the war, the people had learned how to think, to evaluate facts and events with their own common-sense, and to draw well-founded conclusions.