Quotes About Russia

In Russia everything is a secret, but there is no secrecy.

Peter returned to Russia determined to remold his country along Western lines. The old Muscovite state, isolated and introverted for centuries, would reach out to Europe and open itself to Europe. In a sense, the flow of effect was circular: the West affected Peter, the Tsar had a powerful impact upon Russia, and Russia, modernized and emergent, had a new and greater influence on Europe. For all three, therefore—Peter, Russia and Europe—the Great Embassy was a turning point.

Without Rasputin, there could have been no Lenin." ALEXANDER KERENSKY

In Russia we have a proverb--it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

I don't know what it was like back in Russia, Mr. Falk, but our undergraduates come to college to party and smoke dope and, excuse the expression, screw around. It's bad enough we interrupt this orgy with classes. Let's not lose our heads and insist the students stay awake in them.

People kill for tenure at Steklov. How can you abandon it like that?' 'Everyone in Russia has tenure,' Lemuel observed crabbily. 'The problem is they have tenure in Russia.

There would be no Lenin without Rasputin.

Russians like the rest of us prefer to believe that their history has progressed in a straight and positive line. They explain away troubling events such as brutal reigns of Ivan the Terrible or Stalin as necessary stages on the path to greatness.

There's a lot of tension right now between Russia and the Ukraine.

One of the first things Hansen learned when he came to starving Russia in 1920 was that the Russians were Asians. Western culture had been imported into only a few of the larger cities. Most of Russia and the other captive states that comprised the Soviet Union simply did not think or act like the West.

1920 was that the Russians were Asians. Western culture had been imported into only a few of the larger cities. Most of Russia and the other captive states that comprised the Soviet Union simply did not think or act like the West.

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.

Any suggestion that the most open and diverse society on the planet is likely to in any way resemble Russia requires a suspension of common sense that is pretty hard to deal with.

In 1917 there was not a single Bolshevik who considered possible the realization of a socialist society in a single country, and least of all in Russia.

Men who are scandalized at the lack of freedom in Russia do not ask themselves how real is liberty among the poor, the weak, and the ignorant in capitalist society.

The great drama of Russian history has been between its state and society. Put simply, Russia has always had too much state and not enough society.

In a strange way, I expected Russia to become more like America since the Soviet Union collapsed, but the reverse is true. America has become more like Russia: a kleptocratic society.

If there is a pattern, it will come back - maybe in Russia more than anywhere else, because it has collapsed so many times. Maybe less so here in the States, because here the society is so young.

The Russians have had and continue to have an active program to undermine American society.

If the alliance fell apart, years of careful planning and difficult political negotiations with Russia's strange bedfellows would be wasted.

in which he was mortally wounded by his brother-in-law, George Danthès. His death was mourned publicly by all Russia.

I love their feet—although you'll find That all of Russia scarcely numbers Three pairs of shapely feet ... And yet, How long it took me to forget Two special feet. (18)

in Russia, roads are nearly all of the unmade, natural kind, and are so conservative in their nature that they have at the present day precisely the same appearance as they had many centuries ago.

As a whole, a village fete in Russia is a saddening spectacle. It affords a new proof—where, alas! no new proof was required—that we northern nations, who know so well how to work, have not yet learned the art of amusing ourselves.