Quotes About Russia

Amalrik had argued that Marxist ideology had never had a firm grip on the country, that the Russian Orthodox Church had lost its own hold, and that without a central unifying set of beliefs, the country, pulled in opposite directions by social groups with different desires, would eventually self-destruct.

And with this, the transformation of Russia back into the USSR was, for all Putin's intents and purposes, complete.

On August 9, 1999, Boris Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin prime minister of Russia. A week later he was confirmed in that position by a wide majority of the Duma: he proved just as likable, or at least unobjectionable, as Yeltsin had intuited.

America was the very definition of modernity; it was the country that Russia had failed to become.

Russian law in fact gives the prime minister no authority over the military.

Here the state described by Magyar met the society described by Gudkov. When the state used force and ideology as mere tools, society responded as it had over the course of previous generation to both force and ideology: by mobilizing. Russia had a mafia state ruling over a totalitarian society.

This is not another Cold War that we're entering into," he said. "After all, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology." He was tragically wrong.

In the battle for Russia's identity, fear and fatalism usually beat out hope and change.

In the event of defeat," he wrote in the February 1914 memorandum to Nicholas II, "social revolution in its most extreme form is inevitable." Durnovó specifically forecast that the gentry's land would be expropriated and that "Russia will be flung into hopeless anarchy, the issue of which cannot be foreseen.

There were at least 6,185 summary executions in the Red Terror of 1918—in two months. There had been 6,321 death sentences by Russian courts between 1825 and 1917, not all of them carried out.

OVER THE MORE THAN FOUR CENTURIES from the time of Ivan the Terrible, Russia expanded an average of fifty square miles per day.

In the two weeks before the first Duma opened, between April 10 and 25, 1906, the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party convoked its 4th Congress under the slogan of "unity.

Lenin's big gambles—accepting imperial German aid to return to Russia; the coup in Petrograd; the capitulatory separate peace with Germany—had paid off.

For centuries the people in Russia were under a tsar. The Russian people are tsarist. For many centuries the Russian people, especially the Russian peasants, have been accustomed to one person being at the head. And now there should be one.'"366

Eisner, together with the historian Randolph Roth, notes that crime often shoots up in decades in which people question their society and government, including the American Civil War, the 1960s, and post-Soviet Russia.

I would rather live in Russia on black bread and vodka than in the United States at the best hotels. America knows nothing of food, love or art.

Like first love, the heart of Russia will not forget you.

I love Russian culture. I don't know the young Russia, I'm not at all familiar with young Russia, but the old school Russia is good enough for me for the moment.

There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down.

The socialism Nietzsche referred to was not the relatively mild version later popular in Britain, Scandinavia, and Canada, with its sometimes genuine emphasis on the improvement of working-class life, but the full-blown collectivism of Russia, China, and a host of smaller countries.

Pouchkine était son père spirituel. Pouchkine domina la vie littéraire de Dostoïevski du début à la fin. C'est pour lui, l'idole littéraire de sa jeunesse, que le romancier prit pour la dernière fois la parole en public. En 1880, à l'occasion de l'inauguration du monument Pouchkine, Dostoïevski prononça un discours qui eut un immense retentissement dans toute la Russie.

Und wenn Stalin seine Ge­neräle erschießt, dann brauchen wir das nicht einmal zu tuen. Ob wohl Stalin allmählich auch die Juden liquidiert? Vielleicht nennt er sie nur, um die Welt zu täuschen, Trotzkisten. Wer weiß? Jedenfalls sind wir nun mit Rußland verbunden. Wir haben bisher nur Vorteile davon gehabt. Der Führer hat Stalin in einem Film gesehen, und da war er ihm gleich sympathisch. Da hat eigentlich die deutsch-russische Koalition begonnen".

When Russia had disputes with neighbors such as Ukraine over gas prices, it did not hesitate to cut off gas supplies as a form of economic power. Later, when a more sympathetic government came to power in Ukraine, Russia used the lure of heavily discounted gas prices to obtain the extension of its lease of a naval base in Ukraine, thus complicating the prospect that Ukraine might one day join NATO.

Fare il comunismo prima dell'anarchia, cioè prima di avere conquistata la completa libertà politica ed economica, significherebbe (come è significato in Russia) stabilire la più esosa tirannia, tale da far rimpiangere il regime borghese, e ritornare poi (come purtroppo si ritornerà in Russia) al regime capitalistico