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Moscow Quotes

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Moscow Quotes

“I will die in Moscow, not seeing Ukraina. Before death, I will ask Stalin to extract my heart, just before I am burnt in the crematory, from my chest and bury it in my native land, in Kyiv, somewhere above the Dnipro on the mountain-hill. Fate, send happiness to people on this ruined and bloodstained land! Disappear, hatred! Evanesce, poverty!”

HeartDeathHatredUkraineMoscowNative LandStalinKyivDnipro RiverCrematory
Book:Щоденникові записи, 1939-1956 / Дневниковые записи, 1939-1956
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“Call no man lucky until he is dead, but there have been moment of rare satisfaction in the often random and fragmented life of the radical freelance scribbler. I have lived to see Ronald Reagan called “a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda” by his former idolators; to see the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union regarded with fear and suspicion by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (which blacked out an interview with Miloš Forman broadcast live on Moscow TV); to see Mao Zedong relegated like a despot of antiquity. I have also had the extraordinary pleasure of revisiting countries—Greece, Spain, Zimbabwe, and others—that were dictatorships or colonies when first I saw them. Other mini-Reichs have melted like dew, often bringing exiled and imprisoned friends blinking modestly and honorably into the glare. E pur si muove—it still moves, all right.”

FreedomUnited StatesTelevisionRussiaJournalismCommunismLiberationPropagandaDictatorshipColonialismCold War20th CenturySoviet UnionSpainGreeceDespotismMoscowZimbabweCzechoslovakiaMao ZedongPostcolonialismRonald ReaganMilos Forman
Book:Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports
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“There is in Moscow a great curiosity for things American, and a great sympathy for things Negro. So, being both an American and a Negro, I am met everywhere with friendly questions from children and adults as to how we live at home. Is there really a crisis, with people hungry and ragged when there are in America so many factories, so much technique, so much wheat, and cotton and livestock? How can that be? Do they actually kill people in electric chairs? Actually lynch Negroes? Why? The children in the Moscow streets, wise little city children, will oft times gather around you if you are waiting for a streetcar, or looking into a shop window. They will take your hand and ask you about the Scottsboro boys, or if you like the Soviet Union and are going to stay forever. Sometimes as you pass a group of children playing, they will stop and exclaim, "Negro!" But in wonder and surprise a long ways from the insulting derision of the word "Nigger" in the mouths of America's white children. Here, the youth in the schools are taught to respect all races.”

ChildrenRacismPrejudiceSoviet UnionAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsMoscowUssr
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
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“Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a cliché (as well as a tundra of pulverizing boredom) and it forced the cliché upon me in turn. I did have to mention Kafka in my eventual story. The regime fell not very much later, as I had slightly foreseen in that same piece that it would. (I had happened to notice that the young Czechs arrested with us were not at all frightened by the police, as their older mentors had been and still were, and also that the police themselves were almost fatigued by their job. This was totalitarianism practically yawning itself to death.) A couple of years after that I was overcome to be invited to an official reception in Prague, to thank those who had been consistent friends through the stultifying years of what 'The Party' had so perfectly termed 'normalization.' As with my tiny moment with Nelson Mandela, a whole historic stretch of nothingness and depression, combined with the long and deep insult of having to be pushed around by boring and mediocre people, could be at least partially canceled and annealed by one flash of humor and charm and generosity.”

PoliticsHistoryHumourCommitmentPoliceLoyaltyRussiaCommunismGenerosityIronyBoredomCharmMediocrityBureaucracyExileDissentTotalitarianismAllegianceMoscowArgumentsDetention1968KafkaGorbachevCzechoslovakiaArrestNelson MandelaPrague1950s1970s1980sCliches1988Vaclav HavelBad CrowdsCharter 77Zdenek Mlynar
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“MASHA: Happy is he who doesn’t notice whether it's winter or summer. If I were in Moscow, I think I wouldn’t mind about the weather. VERSHININ: Just recently I read the prison memoirs of a French minister — he was imprisoned over the Panama affair. He describes with such ecstasy the little birds he could see through the prison window, which he had never noticed before when he was a minister. Now that he is free again, he notices them no more. And so it will be with you when you live in Moscow — you won’t notice it. There is no happiness, nor should there be; we can only long for it.”

HappinessLongingMoscow
Book:The Three Sisters
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“John Murphy alifika Moscow tarehe 1/11/1992 saa 11 alfajiri akitokea Cairo, Misri. Wakati huo Moscow kulikuwa na baridi sana. Teksi yake ilipofika Teatralny Proezd, upande wa kusini wa Hoteli ya Metropol – karibu na mojawapo ya minara ya mwanzo ya Kitay-gorod, kitovu kikuu cha biashara cha Moscow ya kale – kwa matatizo ya injini; magaidi wanne, waliokuwa wakimfuatilia kwa gari aina ya Bentley Continental S nyeusi – iliyokuwa na namba za kitemi za B 001 BB 77 RUS mali ya Kiongozi wa CS-Moscow Dmitri Olegushka – toka Uwanja wa Ndege wa Sheremetyevo II wa kaskazini-magharibi mwa jiji la Moscow, waliendelea mbele na kusimama mkabala na Jumba la Maonyesho ya Tamthilia la Bolshoy; kisha wawili kati yao wakashuka na kuingia ndani ya kioski, wawili wakibaki ndani ya gari kuhakikisha John Murphy hawapotei. Magaidi hao wa CS-Moscow, Tawi la Kolonia Santita la Urusi na nchi zote za Ulaya ya Mashariki na baadhi ya nchi za Ulaya ya Kusini, walijua Murphy alishawahisi.”

ColdRussiaEgyptTaxiMoscowEastern EuropeTerroristsCairoEngineJohn MurphyMagaidiMisriUrusiCs MoscowBaridiInjini1 11 1992B 001 Bb 77 RusBentley ContinentalBentley Continental SBolshoyDmitri OlegushkaHoteli Ya MetropolKioskKioskiKitay GorodMetropol HotelSheremetyevo Ii AirportSouthern EuropeTeatralny ProezdTeksiUlaya Ya KusiniUlaya Ya Mashariki
Author:Enock Maregesi
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“Florence, listen to me carefully. He squeezed her hand. Take whatever that agent offers you. Give him what he wants, and don’t ask too many questions. Get yourself an exit visa as soon as you can. Then leave! Disappear. Forget this wretched place”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaPolitical DramaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“Our communists aren’t like your communists. In New York they’re always on the street demonstrating, but their demands are absurd. Slash rents! Free groceries and electricity for the poor! They demand that landlords open up their vacant apartments to house the unemployed. They even demand that the Communist Party distribute unemployment relief instead of the Labor Department. They might as well demand cake and champagne!”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaPolitical ThrillerDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“Moscow appeared to her as an Asiatic sprawl of twisting streets, wooden shanties, and horse cabs. But already another Moscow was rising up through the chaos of the first. Streets built to accommodate donkey tracks have been torn open and replaced with boulevards broader than two or three Park Avenues. On the sidewalks, pedestrians were being detoured onto planks around enormous construction pits. A smell of sawdust and metal filings hung in the air”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaPolitical DramaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“The Bolshevik leaders perched atop the Mausoleum were no easier to tell apart than chess pawns. But Florence too was certain that she could recognise the twinkling eyes of Joseph Stalin, which looked down at her each workday from the oil painting above Timofeyev’s desk”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaStalinDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaPolitical DramaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“Sergey described the mighty furnaces and plants rising up from the steppes. “How far we’ve come. How much work there is still to do!” She would have to see it herself one day, with her own eyes. Florence reread the last line with a turbulent flip in her stomach. Was this an invitation?”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaPolitical DramaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“From the moment Julian entered the world, Florence had begun to conceive of life as separate from the aspects of its outward circumstances. Over and over, life renewed itself. Over and over, it made itself blind to the death and destruction of the past”

AmericaRomanceMotherPoliticsFamilyFeminismMotherhoodLove StoryCommunismSovietSoviet UnionMoscowSoviet RussiaDoctor ZhivagoBased On Real EventsBased On A True StorySoviet Literature20th Century RussiaPolitical DramaBrookyln
Author:Sana Krasikov
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“The virus of independence-seeking is also spreading in Africa. The Cold War is raging in full force and both power blocs are trying to increase their influence by harnessing the black intelligentsia in the colonies to their respective chariots. Through foreign embassies, the most able students are tracked down and ideologically groomed to play a political role. The colonies must become independent in favour of the neo-colonial policies of Washington and Moscow!”

United StatesCold WarSoviet UnionCongoMoscowBelgian CongoWashington
Book:Congo belge: La colonie assassinée
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“We drove across the Red Square past Lenin's Mausoleum and the towers and domes of the Kremlin--and stopped a block away at the Grand Hotel. Our rooms were ready for us--clean and comfortable, with hot and cold water, homelike settees and deep roomy chairs. Courteous attendants were there, baths and elevator, a book shop and two restaurants. Everything that a hotel for white folks at home would have--except that, quite truthfully, there was no toilet paper. And no Jim Crow. Of course, we knew that one of the basic principles of the Soviet Union is the end of all racial distinctions. That's the main reason we had come to Moscow.”

RaceRacismCommunismSoviet UnionAfrican AmericansBlacksMoscowJim CrowUssrHotels
Book:Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings
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“Everybody says: the Kremlin, the Kremlin. They all go on about it, but I've never seen it. The number of times (thousands) I've been drunk or hung over, traipsing round Moscow, north-south, east-west, end to end, straight through or any old way - and I've never once seen the Kremlin. For instance, yesterday - yesterday I didn't see it again, though I was buzzing round that area the whole evening and it's not as if I was particularly drunk. I mean, as soon as I came out onto Savyelov Station, I had a glass of Zubrovka for starters, since I know from experience that as an early-morning tipple, nobody's so far dreamed up anything better. Anyway, a glass of Zubrovka. Then after that - on Kalyaev Street - another glass, only not Zubrovka this time, but coriander vodka. A friend of mine used to say coriander had a dehumanizing effect on a person, i.e, it refreshes your parts but it weakens your spirit. For some reason or other it had the opposite effect on me, i.e., my spirit was refreshed, while my parts all went to hell. But I do agree it's dehumanizing, so that's why I topped it up with two glasses of Zhiguli beer, plus some egg-nog straight from the bottle, in the middle of Kalyaev Street. Of course, you're saying: come on, Venya, get on with it — what did you have next? And I couldn't say for sure. I remember - I remember quite distinctly in fact - I had two glasses of Hunter's vodka, on Chekhov Street. But I couldn't have made it across the Sadovy ring road with nothing to drink, I really couldn't. So I must've had something else.”

AlcoholismMoscowMother Russia
Author:Venedikt Erofeev
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“Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was the most Communist (and in the rather orthodox sense) of the Palestinian formations. I remember Edward once surprising me by saying, and apropos of nothing: 'Do you know something I have never done in my political career? I have never publicly criticized the Soviet Union. It’s not that I terribly sympathize with them or anything—it's just that the Soviets have never done anything to harm me, or us.' At the time I thought this a rather naïve statement, even perhaps a slightly contemptible one, but by then I had been in parts of the Middle East where it could come as a blessed relief to meet a consecrated Moscow-line atheist-dogmatist, if only for the comparatively rational humanism that he evinced amid so much religious barking and mania. It was only later to occur to me that Edward's pronounced dislike of George Orwell was something to which I ought to have paid more attention.”

ReligionPoliticsAtheismHumanismCommunismLiberationMiddle EastRationalitySoviet UnionPalestineReligious ExtremismMoscowDogmatismOrwellPalestiniansEdward SaidDflp
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“The night had teeth. Wind tore through the apple trees, their skeletal branches clawing at the sky. Beyond the garden fence, the dacha settlement lay in uneasy slumber—rows of dark shacks, abandoned for the season, their windows blind and cold. Chicken-wire fences sagged under rust and neglect, some topped with barbed wire that glinted like fangs in the distant glow of Moscow. Far off, a cement plant loomed against the horizon, a hulking silhouette of Soviet ambition gone to rot. To the north, the pines of Elk Island groaned under the gale, their black crowns thrashing like beasts in chains. And above it all, the October sky churned with torn clouds, racing toward some unseen war. I walked two hundred yards down the gravel drive, past sleeping plots fenced in rusted wire, boots rasping over dry, dead grass. Tested the radio. Exchanged a few words with Romeo. Static hissed like a snake in the dark, but the signal held.”

Cold WarEspionageMoscowVigilante Justice
Book:Last Tango in Moscow: A Cold War Tale of Espionage, the Mafia, and Forbidden Love
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“W.Z. Foster {head of the American Communist Party}, who had no money, went to Moscow and came back and announced that he was building a great secret machine to undermine the American labor movement and turn it over to the Red International, owned by Lenin. He began publication of an expensive magazine and proclaimed 'a thousand secret agents in a thousand communities.'”

TurnsCommunityPartySecretMovementBuildingThousandRedLaborMachinesInternationalJewMagazinesAgentsExpensiveCommunistPublicationNo MoneyMoscowCommunist PartyLabor MovementSecret Agent
Author:Samuel Gompers
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“To his lasting credit, President Reagan never wavered. He recognized the strategic importance of staying the course, both in terms of denying Moscow the military hegemony it sought in Western Europe and of restoring the will, cohesiveness, and security of the NATO alliance, so badly frayed during the turbulent 1970s.”

CoursesPresidentTermSecurityMilitaryEuropeImportanceWesternCreditStayingLastingStrategicAlliancesNatoMoscowRestoringHegemonyWestern EuropePresident ReaganCohesiveness
Author:Frank Gaffney
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“I'm a historian by training and by conviction. And so the thing that has throughout informed my thinking about international relations is history. I think, for example, the reason that I was perhaps able to see sooner than some others that the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe was decaying--if not disintegrating--was that I came to it through history and through Germany, rather than through Sovietology and through Moscow. And therefore the starting point was that no empire in history has lasted forever, and this one won't either.”

IfsThinkingReasonAbleForeverExampleTrainingEuropeRelationStartingInternationalConvictionGermanyEmpiresHistorianSovietEasternInternational RelationsStarting PointMoscowEastern Europe
Author:Timothy Garton Ash
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“In Moscow, dim and green under the summer rain, columns of armour were waiting in the side-roads off the long avenue from Vnukovo airport. Tanks from the Taman Division stood beneath the dripping trees around Moscow University with their field kitchens and command trucks. This was not a new sight to me: the Soviet tanks had rested like that beneath the trees of the parks in Prague, late in another August twenty-three years before. Now they had invaded and crushed one more country -- their own.”

YearsLongCountryThreeWaitingSidesTreeFieldsLateSummerRainSightTwentiesGreenUniversityCommandKitchenParksDivisionSovietThree YearsTruckAirportsAvenuesTanksCrushedColumnsAugustMoscowDrippingArmourPragueSummer Rain
Author:Neal Ascherson
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