Quotes from Catherine Merridale

The gentleness, the sentimentality, of many Soviet troops toward small children in Prussia was noted at the time. A woman with a baby, local people learned, was practically immune to rape. But even sentimental troops, the men who kept their pockets full of sweets for hungry German kids, worried about their families back home. It was a long time since any had seen their children.

Assisted by Samuel Collins, the tsar embarked on a series of scientific and alchemical experiments, to conduct which he imported a range of new devices – phials, metals, lenses and measuring instruments – from the German lands. These were exotica in their own right, and since they had no native Russian names, many were called by their original German ones, beginning a long tradition of importing German scientific terms into the Russian language.

As modern tyrannies are swept away (and every honest heart delights), the quick-thinking servants of the world's great powers still proffer plans to intervene, to jostle, scheme and sponsor factions that they barely understand.

The history of Lenin's train is not exclusively the property of the Soviets. In part, it is a parable about great-power intrigue, and one rule there is that great powers almost always get things wrong.

An oppressed class which does not strive to learn the use of weapons [the Russian word, oruzhiia, contains another wonderful long r], to practice the use of weapons, to own weapons, deserves to be mistreated Ã¢â'¬Â¦ The demand for disarmament in the present-day world is nothing but an expression of despair.

Human dignity is something one need not look for in the world of capitalists. V. I. Lenin

Sometimes a scoundrel is useful to our party precisely because he is a scoundrel. V. I. Lenin

The last blow fell in 1947, when Stalin ordered that the streets of Soviet cities should be cleared of beggars, many of whom were amputees. Maimed veterans who had chosen urban life were herded back into trains, this time bound for the north, and especially for an island on the far side of Lake Ladoga, Valaam. Stalin's unwilling lepers often died in exile.

Like many compositions of its kind - all muscles, square jaws and sunshine - it is stronger on the socialism than the reality

the sound of tramping feet beat out a requiem for the old world - but no one could be sure where it might lead