UN General Assembly
1953

34. Men’s minds develop, whatever the form of society. The Soviet Union has gone far in learning and applying the material facts of life. Maybe they are coming round to considering, if not the spiritual, then at least some of the social — or perhaps, rather, the sociological — lessons that the democratic world has learnt in many centuries of development, and that such lessons are now in the process of beginning to influence their minds, as practical considerations. Perhaps — we do not know — the great thaw may be starting in the Ice Age of Soviet politics. All this may be hopelessly wrong. One’s common sense tells one that it is, but there is just the hope that we may be seeing a gleam of light at the end of the tunnel, and this bare possibility is my excuse for taking up, for a short time, the time of the General Assembly in referring to it.