Quotes About Russia

There is something in the Russia-ness of Russia that often seems to intoxicate. Again and again, discussions of the country's history, particularly those of non-Russians but sometimes those of Russians themselves, veer into romanticised essentialism, evocations of some supposed irreducible, ineffable Russian Spirit, with a black box at its heart. Not only uniquely sad but uniquely inscrutable, evasive of explanation: mnogostradalnaya, much-suffering Russia; Little Mother Russia.

Democracy' was a sociological term in Russia in 1917, denoting the masses, the lower class, at least as strongly as it did a political method. For many b those heady moments, Kerensky exemplified 'the democracy'.

One U.S. senator has described Russia as "a gas station masquerading as a country"—and indeed, oil and gas play as large a role as ever.

In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.

Five long centuries of absolutism -from Ivan the Terrible to the Soviet seventies- had left the Russian massed submissive. In their personal lives, I found them ingenious in beating the numbing inefficiency of the state economy. Their black market was so vast that it operated as a countereconomy, even to the extent of producing underground millionaires. But in the sphere of political action, grass-roots initative was moribund.

Soviet Russia was grudgingly admired by the Franco regime.

St Petersburg society looked upon Grand Duchess Vladimir as the real Empress of Russia, for Alexandra now hardly ever emerged from her retirement at Tsarskoe Selo.

T)here was no missing the enormous irony of the fact that from Russia--"a country where her poems were needed, like bread, she had ended up in a country where nobody needed her or anyone else's poems. Even Russian people in emigration ceased to need them," Tsvetaeva said, "And that made Russian poets miserable.

political change in Russia could come through parliamentary politics and unionisation of the workers in a campaign for social reform, economic freedom, better pay and conditions. Such thinking – suggesting conciliation with capitalism and the monarchy – enraged Ulyanov,

together, and in Russia. Ekaterinburg was their Calvary.

The Yeltsin years considerably lowered the bar [of public expectations] for the country's next leader: Putin's specific policies and actions arguably matter far less than his reassuring symbolic function as "a real man" who can husband the nation's resources and promise a return to greatness. (2007: 227)

Since Peter the Great, Russia had been expanding at the rate of one Belgium per year.

if Afghanistan returns to its prewar status as a base for jihadist non-state organizations or as a state dedicated to jihadist policies: Pakistan above all in its entire domestic structure, Russia in its partly Muslim south and west, China with a significantly Muslim Xinjiang, and even Shiite Iran from fundamentalist Sunni trends.

Constantly changing shape as its rulers annexed contiguous territories, Russia was an empire out of scale in comparison with any of the European countries. Moreover, with every new conquest, the character of the state changed as it incorporated another brand-new, restive, non-Russian ethnic group. This was one of the reasons Russia felt obliged to maintain huge armies whose size was unrelated to any plausible threat to its external security.

Because the unchecked eastward advance into Manchuria and Korea of Russia—a country that, in Roosevelt's words, "pursued a policy of consistent opposition to us in the East, and of literally fathomless mendacity"—

they agreed to cede a third of European Russia to German control in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk of 1918.

Não fizeram qualquer esforço para incluir a vizinha Rússia, que na época, findo o pesadelo de um «tempo de dificuldades», reconstruía a sua própria ordem consagrando princípios em clara contradição com o equilíbrio vestefaliano: um único soberano absoluto, uma ortodoxia religiosa unificada, e um programa de expansão territorial em todas as direções.

Russian rulers appealed to their people on the basis of their endurance, not their greatness. Russian diplomacy relied, to an extraordinary extent, on superior power. Russia rarely had allies among countries where it had not stationed military forces. Russian diplomacy tended to be power-oriented, tenaciously holding on to fixed positions and transforming foreign policy into trench warfare.

No leader among Russia's immediate neighbors shares America's faith in Russian conversion as the key to his country's security.

Russia will occupy most of the good food lands of central Europe while we have the industrial portions. We must find some way of persuading Russia to play ball.

On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began--that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature.

Russia alone is to be the savior of Europe.

And the moujiks? How do the moujiks die?

Yes, what would Russia be without me?" he [Tsar Nicholas I] said to himself, again sensing the approach of the unpleasant feeling. "Yes, what would, not just Russia, but Europe be without me?" And he remembered his brother-in-law, the king of Prussia, and his weakness and stupidity and shook his head.