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Russia Quotes

“Both Bratva and thieves in law would like to call themselves nihilists and anarchists because they don’t support the established government, but they govern nonetheless, and you can’t be an anarchist unless you follow its rule. Crime and anarchy are no more synonymous than nihilism and existentialism, or fatalism and determinism; so many isms there was bound to be a schism.”

PhilosophyRussiaExistentialismAnarchyNihilismRussian MafiaBratvaFatalistThief In LawThieve In Law
Book:Red Russia
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“The man who did the shooting was a civilian, Peter Kakhovsky, a gifted intellectual of extreme purity of motive in whom the conviction of the necessity of regicide burned with a gem-like flame. Determined to kill, expecting to die, this brilliant and terrible apparition, his slender form bundled up in a sheepskin coat, his delicate features surmounted by a shabby top hat, shot to kill with that indiscriminate ruthlessness which was later to characterise a whole generation of revolutionary terrorists. If he could not yet murder the Tsar, he would do the next best thing.”

HistoryRussiaTsar Nicholas
Author:Edward Crankshaw
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“I've played Romeo for Juliet (But in depth) It's vignettes of silhouettes (And then read) And watched Russian roulette, yeah red Soviet Yet doing it simultaneously While dropping down shed oubliettes Turned around and took truth to the head that Love is the ugliest thing too beautiful for death”

LoveTruthPainDeathPoetryArtistReadingGamesBeautyOvercomingEternityAdversityRussiaUnconditional LoveSongwritingSovietSoviet UnionUglinessLyricsOvercoming ObstaclesEternal LoveRhymingRussianRomeo And JulietRussian RouletteVignettesSoviet Russian
Book:Killosophy
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“Despite its imperial roots, the current war is being waged in a new international environment defined by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the disintegration of the post–Cold War international order, and an unprecedented resurgence of populist nationalism, last seen in the 1930s, throughout the world. The war clearly indicates that Europe and the world have all but spent the peace dividend resulting from the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and are entering a new, as yet undetermined, era. A new world order, possibly replicating the bipolar world of the Cold War era, is being forged in the flames of the current war. At the time of writing that war is not over, and we do not yet know what its end will bring. But it is quite clear even today that the future of the world in which we and our children and grandchildren will be living depends greatly on its outcome.”

RussiaUkraineInternational RelationsWorld OrderRusso Ukrainian War
Book:The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History
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“They're really going to mash the world up this time, the damn fools. When I read that description of the victims of Nagasaki I was sick: "And we saw what first looked like lizards crawling up the hill, croaking. It got lighter and we could see that it was humans, their skin burned off, and their bodies broken where they had been thrown against something." Sounds like something out of a horror story. God save us from doing that again. For the United States did that. Our guilt. My country. No, never again.”

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Author:Sylvia Plath
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“There is only one salvation for you: take yourself up, and make yourself responsible for all the sins of men. For indeed it is so, my friend, and the moment you make yourself sincerely responsible for everything and everyone, you will see at once that it is really so, that it is you who are guilty on behalf of all and for all. Whereas by shifting your own laziness and powerlessness onto others, you will end by sharing in Satan's pride and murmuring against God. The Brothers Karamazov Book VI - The Russian Monk, Chapter 3 - Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zosima.”

GodReligionCommunityRussiaHolinessOrthodoxPietyThe Brothers KaramazovEastern Orthodox
Author:Fyodor Dostoevsky
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“The particular importance of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution is not, however, that it took place in such a large and important country in the former Soviet empire or that it inspired many countries still burdened with postcommunism, but in something perhaps even more significant: that revolution gave a clear answer to a still open question: where does one of the major spheres of civilization in the world today (the so-called West) end, and where does the other sphere (the so-called East, or rather Euro-Asia) begin? I recall — and I mentioned this during my meeting with Yuschenko — that an important American politician once asked me where Ukraine belongs. My impression is that it belongs to what we call the West. But that’s not what I said; I said that this was a matter for Ukraine to decide for itself.”

RussiaUkraineRussia Ukraine WarOrange Revolution
Book:To the Castle and Back: Reflections on My Strange Life as a Fairy-Tale Hero
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“Для российского обывателя телевизор — это источник «правильной» позиции, ретрансляция которой оберегает от соприкосновения с госмашиной. Нечто вроде комсомольского значка на лацкане пиджака — эдакий знак публичной лояльности, который подобно оберегу защищает тебя от опричнины. В государстве, где люди не могут влиять на власть, телевизионная риторика выполняет роль компаса. Она показывает тебе — как нужно высказываться по тем или иным темам, чтобы не навлечь на себя беду. Тот, кто ее ретранслирует — вовсе не обязательно ее разделяет. Это лишь коллективное пение гимна на утреннем поднятии флага: правильное выражение лица и патриотическая поза защищают от обвинений в нелояльности, которые могут закончиться житейскими проблемами.”

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Author:Павел Казарин
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“Some of the farm's work reached a level of granularity that stunned Lyudmilla. Two trolls would go on the comments sections of small' provincial newspapers and start chatting about the street they lived in, the weather, then caually recommend a piece about the nefarious West attacking Russia. No one who worked at the farm described themselves as trolls. Instead, they talked about their work in the passive voice ('a piece was written', 'a comment was made'). Most treated the farm as if it was just another job, doing the minimum required and then clocking off. Many of them seemed pleasant enough young people, with open, pretty faces, and yet they didn't blink when asked to smear, degrade, insult and humiliate their victims. The ease with which victims were attacked, the scale at which the farm operated, it all stunned Lyudmilla.”

Social MediaRussiaJournalismOnlineTrollTrollsTrollingOnline AbuseBotsFake Personas
Book:This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality
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“Never since the days of the Spartan Helots has history recorded such brutality as has been ever since the war and as is now being perpetrated upon the Negro in the South. How easy for us to go to Russia and drop a tear of sympathy over the persecuted Jew. But a step across Mason's and Dixon's line will bring us upon a scene of horrors before which those of Russia, bad as they are, pale into insignificance! No irresponsible, blood-thirsty mobs prowl over Russian territory, lashing and lynching its citizens.”

RussiaJewishLynchingAmerican SouthBlack AmericansMason DixonMob ViolenceSouthern Usa1892
Author:Lucy Parsons
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“I revealed my affection towards my former employer and felt sick at myself for betraying him. My grandfather stood and poured me another tall glass. He offered me a sour tomato to take the edge off of the vodka. Pappy pulled his chair up next to mine then put his oversized arm around my shoulder and offered me his wisdom. "Feel no pity for this man James," he whispered. "A fool and his money are lucky to come together in the first place. More so, it's the responsibility of much smarter, more dubious men to party them," he finished.”

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Author:Gary "Gunz" Govich
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“In his book The Captive Mind, written in 1951-2 and published in the West in 1953, the Polish poet and essayist Czeslaw Milosz paid Orwell one of the greatest compliments that one writer has ever bestowed upon another. Milosz had seen the Stalinisation of Eastern Europe from the inside, as a cultural official. He wrote, of his fellow-sufferers: A few have become acquainted with Orwell’s 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life. Only one or two years after Orwell’s death, in other words, his book about a secret book circulated only within the Inner Party was itself a secret book circulated only within the Inner Party.”

RussiaCommunismCensorshipTotalitarianismGeorge OrwellNineteen Eighty FourCzeslaw Milosz
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“A few have become acquainted with Orwell’s 1984; because it is both difficult to obtain and dangerous to possess, it is known only to certain members of the Inner Party. Orwell fascinates them through his insight into details they know well, and through his use of Swiftian satire. Such a form of writing is forbidden by the New Faith because allegory, by nature manifold in meaning, would trespass beyond the prescriptions of socialist realism and the demands of the censor. Even those who know Orwell only by hearsay are amazed that a writer who never lived in Russia should have so keen a perception into its life.”

RussiaSocialismCommunismCensorshipTotalitarianismGeorge OrwellNineteen Eighty Four
Author:Czesław Miłosz
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“On January 2, 1956 President Tubman’s staff informed the American Ambassador, General Richard Lee Jones, that the Soviet delegation had sent him a note stating that the Soviets wanted to exchange diplomatic relations with Liberia. His response was that the United States would be gravely concerned if the Government of Liberia accepted a diplomatic mission in Monrovia, and that such a mission would be a blow to the internal stability of Liberia. Tubman agreed with Jones but told the Ambassador that he had already set up a meeting with them set for January 6th, however he insured Jones that he would not allow the Soviets into Liberia. He said that, “Although Liberia had an open door policy; it was prepared to do business only with the democratic countries whose businessmen would have to stand on their own two feet without any interference from their governments.”

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Author:Captain Hank Bracker, "Seawater Two...."
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“Father Dmitry had thought he had been serving his nation by spreading trust, and fighting abortion and despair, but, in doing so, he was defying the state. And that was not allowed. That was why he had to be crushed. His fate parallels the fate of his whole nation. Through the twentieth century, the government in Moscow taught the Russians that hope and trust are dangerous, inimical and treacherous. That is the root of the social breakdown that has caused the epidemic of alcoholism, the collapsing birth rate, the crime and the misery.”

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Author:Oliver Bullough
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“Darwin's theory was received in Russia with profound sympathy. While in Western Europe it met firmly established old traditions which it had first to overcome, in Russia its appearance coincided with the awakening of our society after the Crimean War and here it immediately received the status of full citizenship and ever since has enjoyed widespread popularity.”

ScienceTheoryEvolutionRussiaBiologySympathyPopularityCitizenshipScientific TheoryTheory Of EvolutionDarwinWestern EuropeCharles DarwinCrimean War
Author:Vladimir Onufrievich Kovalevskiĭ
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“Batya was the first link in the iron chain of the oprichniks. After him other links were attached, welded, fused into the Great Ring of the oprichnina, its sharp barbs pointed outward. With this ring His Majesty drew a sick, rotting, collapsing country together, he lassoed it like a wounded bear, dripping ichor blood. And the bear grew strong of bone and muscle, its wounds healed, it put on fat, its claws grew out. And we let its blood, blood that was rotten, poisoned by enemies. Now the roar of the Russian bear is heard by the entire world.”

RussiaVivid Imagery
Book:Day of the Oprichnik
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“A trained Soviet KGB operative then heading its successor outfit, the FSB, Putin had done the sitting Russian president the memorable favor of successfully derailing the criminal investigation into the Yeltsin clan. He did so by blackmailing Russia’s prosecutor general with a fake sex tape.”

RussiaVladimir PutinBoris YeltsinSex Tape
Book:Blowout: Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth
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“Bulgakov always loved clowning and agreed with E. T. A. Hoffmann that irony and buffoonery are expressions of ‘the deepest contemplation contemplation of life in all its conditionality’. It is not by chance that his stage adaptations of the comic masterpieces of Gogol and Cervantes coincided with the writing of The Master and Margarita. Behind such specific ‘influences’ stands the age-old tradition of folk humour with its carnivalized world-view, its reversals and dethronings, its relativizing of worldly absolutes—a tradition that was the subject of a monumental study by Bulgakov’s countryman and contemporary Mikhail Bakhtin. Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World, which in its way was as much an explosion of Soviet reality as Bulgakov’s novel, appeared in 1965, a year before The Master and Margarita. The coincidence was not lost on Russian readers. Commenting on it, Bulgakov’s wife noted that, while there had never been any direct link between the two men, they were both responding to the same historical situation from the same cultural basis.”

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Book:The Master and Margarita
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“Eastward and westward storms are breaking,--great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. I will not believe them inevitable.”

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Book:The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois
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“As Michael spoke, a flourish of horns and maracas blasted over the speakers. The music made Veronica think of Havana in the fifties, before Fidel Castro. Men in Panama hats and women in slinky dresses enjoying decadent lives before Communism's proverbial hammer swung down. Just like tsarist Russia. For a moment, Veronica was back in the Russian dream world of ornate palaces and complicated love affairs.”

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Book:Secret Daughter of the Tsar
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“In this way, the Church was a true reflection of the whole of Russian society. The KGB and the Russian people had penetrated each other to such an extent that they could not be separated. The culture of betrayal and suspicion and distrust that the KGB relied on had become part of the national culture, poisoning politics in the 1990s and beyond: decades of corruption, murder and sordid sex scandals. If it cannot purge itself, however, the Russian nation will never rid itself of the illness that has driven people to alcohol. Russians need to trust each other again.”

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Author:Oliver Bullough
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“A few minutes after 8 p.m. on the dark, cold Sunday night of March 4, 2001, Robert Hanssen was apprehended in the otherwise quiet Foxstone Park, in suburban Vienna, Virginia. He had been an FBI Agent for 22 years, looking forward to his retirement, while at the same time spying for the KGB Soviet and Russian intelligence against the United States. FBI Agents had finally caught Hanssen, the mole in their midst, in the act of hiding a plastic bag full of U.S. Government secret documents, under a foot bridge in the park. At the same time other FBI Agents retrieved a package, containing $50,000, thought have been Hanssen’s payment. Although he was caught red-handed the FBI still had to buy additional evidence before he pleaded guilty to 13 counts of espionage. Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison, without the possibility of parole, and confined in a “Supermax” prison, where he still remains locked up in his cell, 23 hours a day. It was determined that Hanssen received over $600,000, plus diamonds and cash, during his career as a spy. It was also discovered that he had links to other FBI investigations including the Aldrich Ames and Felix Bloch cases. To date, his 25 years of subversive activities created the worst intelligence disaster in our countries history.”

RussiaSpyKgbFbi History
Book:Suppressed I Rise
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“Mikhaïl avait été le chef des Jeunes communistes à la faculté d’ingénierie. N’allez pas imaginer un apparatchik du Parti. Dans la dernière phase, le Komsomol n’attirait que les garçons les plus cyniques et ambitieux, ceux qui étaient prêts à tout et ceux qui voulaient de l’argent. À la fin des années quatre-vingt, le seul type d’entreprise autorisé en Union soviétique était la coopérative d’étudiants et ce fut la business school du capitalisme russe. C’est là que s’est formée la majorité des oligarques.”

RussiaOligarchs
Book:Le Mage du Kremlin
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“Ksenia était ma déesse, capricieuse et vindicative, je vivais dans la terreur de ses changements d’humeur et je n’aurais jamais imaginé qu’un sac en crocodile et une suite au Crillon puissent être suffisants pour garantir sa bienveillance. Chaque jour, je déposais à ses pieds les perles que j’extrayais de mes douloureuses élucubrations poétiques, sans voir qu’un bracelet de diamants aurait produit des effets bien plus durables. Il est étrange de constater combien notre cerveau fait d’efforts parfois pour nous cacher la vérité. Nous avons sous les yeux tous les indices et pourtant notre esprit se refuse à assembler les pièces.”

LoveRussiaOligarchs
Book:Le Mage du Kremlin
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“Михаил Африканович Терентьев, участник Большой Игры, ставший ее первым, и на долгие годы главным летописцем, в своих очерках «Туркестан и туркестанцы» вспоминает интересную деталь. После нашего завоевания Средней Азии местные жители уверяли, что зимы в Туркестане после прихода русских стали гораздо суровее — русские, мол, принесли с собой холод. Занятно, как они объясняли этот факт. Аллах, утверждали они, любит русских, иначе не отдал бы нас им во владение. А поскольку русские любят холод, он и сделал климат попрохладнее — чтобы им легче здесь жилось. Когда я пересказал это своей жене — профессиональному историку, изучающему дореволюционный Дальний Восток, она ответила, что зазейские маньчжуры в Амурской области говорили то же самое — никогда, мол, у них не было таких холодных зим, как после прихода русских.”

HistoryRussiaTurkestan
Book:Люди, принесшие холод. Книга первая. Лес и степь
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“Per molto tempo, non so nemmeno per quanto, io ho vissuto in luoghi astratti. Stavo qui, nella mia casa o sul posto di lavoro, eppure non c'ero, disse, ero altrove. Io mi svegliavo - perché senza dubbio la mattina mi svegliavo - e avevo la sensazione di non esserci, come se il sonno mi avesse rubato o continuasse ad esistere durante la veglia. facevo ogni cosa come se al posto mio ci fosse qualcun altro. Lei deve credermi: era come se non sapessi chi ero.”

RussiaIncipitChikatiloIl Giadino Delle Mosche
Book:Il giardino delle mosche
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“But the powerful and respected party right, particularly Stalin, went so far in the direction of moderation as to support a merger of Bolsheviks and Mensheviks - the proposal of Irakli Tsereteli, the outstanding Menshevik intellect and orator, recently returned from Siberian exile and now in charge of the Petrograd Soviet.”

RussiaStalinOctober RevolutionTsereteli
Book:October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
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“The early days of revolution were remarkable for how submerged and scattered that hard right was. Most of its high-profile figures had left the country or been arrested after February. Only the erratic Purishkevich remained at large, more or less powerless, tolerated and toothless. The political integument of Petrograd in particular had lurched leftward, repositioning radicals as moderates and moderates as right-wingers. In those days everyone was, or claimed to be, a socialist. No one wanted to be bourgeois.”

RussiaOctober Revolution
Book:October: The Story of the Russian Revolution
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“Since well before the Kung's engine noise first penetrated the forest, a conversation of sorts has been unfolding in this lonesome hollow. It is not a language like Russian or Chinese but it is a language nonetheless, and it is older than the forest. The crows speak it; the dog speaks it; the tiger speaks it, and so do the men--some more fluently than others.”

NatureRussiaWildernessHuntingTigersForestTigerPoaching
Book:The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
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