Quotes & Sayings About Russian History

Stalin is one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. He began as a small clerk, and he has never stopped being a clerk. Stalin owes nothing to rhetoric. He governs from his office, thanks to a bureaucracy that obeys his every nod and gesture. It's striking that Russian propaganda, in the criticisms it makes of us, always holds itself within certain limits. Stalin, that cunning Caucasian, is apparently quite ready to abandon European Russia, if he thinks that a failure to solve her problems would cause him to lose everything. Let nobody think Stalin might reconquer Europe from the Urals! It is as if I were installed in Slovakia, and could set out from there to reconquer the Reich. This is the catastrophe that will cause the loss of the Soviet Empire. — Adolf Hitler

The clash between the aspirations of the people for a better life and the insistence of their rulers on building a powerful state, regardless of human sacrifice, runs through the whole of Russian history — Harrison Salisbury

The Russians would lose 305,000 troops in the last 42 miles approaching Berlin
about the number of American army soldiers who died in all of World War II. Of the 125,000 of Berlin's civilians who died in the Russian attack, 6,400 were suicides; — Andrei Cherny

While I fold laundry I memorize things for school,
dates of wars:
French ones, African ones, Russian ones,
battles of all ugly kinds.
It's a shame to have us hopeful young students
learn these horrible things.
Exactly the kind of behaving
they have told us over and over again not to do
is what the history class is full of,
full-grown adults making these wars:
killing each other for land, for religions,
for greed and more greed,
Why bother to have children and educate them
and invent things to make their lives better,
just to send them off to war and get slaughtered? — Virginia Euwer Wolff

If you are a denier, get on the right side of history and stop being so gullible. Remember, it has been historically and scientifically proven, in a court of law no less, that more than 1.2 million Jews, along with 20,000 gypsies and tens of thousands of Polish and Russian political prisoners, were killed at Auschwitz alone. Beyond that, Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names has collected 4.5 million Jewish victims' names (and counting) from various archival sources. How much more evidence could you possibly want? — James Morcan

He might be better considered as an exponent of Tartar financial, military, and political methods, who used the shifting alliances of khans and princes to replace the Tartar yoke with a Muscovite one. In his struggle with the Golden Horde, whose hegemony he definitively rejected after 1480, his closest ally was the Khan of the Crimea, who helped him to attack the autonomy of his fellow Christian principalities to a degree that the Tartars had never attempted. From the Muscovite point of view, which later enjoyed a monopoly, 'Ivan the Great' was the restorer of 'Russian' hegemony. From the viewpoint of the Novgorodians or the Pskovians he was the Antichrist, the destroyer of Russia's best traditions. When he came to write his will, he described himself, as his father had done, as 'the much-sinning slave of God'. — Norman Davies

I'm interested in Russian language, culture, history ... and I lived there, for four years, as a reporter for the Washington Post and have visited many times since. — David Remnick

Mankind can still continue to live without the Englishman, can continue without Germany, can continue all too well without the Russian, can continue without science, can continue without bread - it is only without beauty that we cannot continue, for there will be nothing at all to do in the world! That's where the whole secret lies, that's where the whole of history lies! Science itself would not last a minute without beauty - — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Until the end of the nineteenth century these undergraduates never numbered more than a few thousand. Entirely on their own, however, and in
defiance of the most integrated absolutism of the time, they aspired to liberate and provisionally did
contribute to the liberation of forty million muzhiks. Almost all of them paid for this liberation by suicide,
execution, prison, or madness. The entire history of Russian terrorism can be summed up in the struggle
of a handful of intellectuals to
abolish tyranny, against a background of a silent populace. Their debilitated victory was finally betrayed.
But by their sacrifice and even by their most extreme negations they gave substance to a new standard of
values, a new virtue, which even today has not ceased to oppose tyranny and to give aid to the cause of
true liberation. — Albert Camus

Among many, many others, the following things were definitely not interesting: the pupillary sphincter, mitosis, baroque architecture, jokes that have physics equations as punch lines, the British monarchy, Russian grammar, and the significant role that salt has played in human history. — John Green

With a rumble and a roar, an iron curtain is descending on Russian history. — Vasily Rozanov

The history of Chechnya is one of imperialism gone terribly wrong. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Chechens were among the few peoples to fend off Mongol conquerors, but at a terrible cost. Turks, Persians, and Russians sought to seize Chechnya, and it was finally absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1859. — Stephen Kinzer

I love the dancers in the Bolshoi, but all of my Moscow friends are outside the company. A friend introduced me to Vika Gazinskaya, a well-known Russian designer. I met her group. The rest is history. — David Hallberg

A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position. She's the only country in history in a position actually to become involved in a bloodless revolution. The Russian revolution was bloody, Chinese revolution was bloody, French revolution was bloody, Cuban revolution was bloody, and there was nothing more bloody then the American Revolution. But today this country can become involved in a revolution that won't take bloodshed. All she's got to do is give the black man in this country everything that's due him, everything. — Malcolm X

Nobody brings ancient history and archaeology to life like Adrienne Mayor. From the Russian steppes to China, and from Roman Egypt and Arabia to the Etruscans, she leads the reader on a breathtaking quest for the real ancient warrior women reflected in myths
their daring, archery, tattoos, fine horses, and independence from male control. The book's rich erudition, communicated in sparkling prose and beautiful illustrations, makes it a riveting read. — Edith Hall

Historians usually focus their attention on the past of countries that still exist, writing hundreds and thousands of books on British history, French history, German history, Russian history, American history, Chinese history, Indian history, Brazilian history or whatever. Whether consciously or not, they are seeking the roots of the present, thereby putting themselves in danger of reading history backwards. As soon as great powers arise, whether the United States in the twentieth century or China in the twenty-first, the call goes out for offerings on American History or Chinese History, and siren voices sing that today's important countries are also those whose past is most deserving of examination, that a more comprehensive spectrum of historical knowledge can be safely ignored. — Norman Davies

What I found interesting about Slava Fetisov was that he went through three different generations of Soviet hockey. In the late 70's, he experienced the Miracle on Ice, and then in the 80's became with his teammates the Russian Five, the most dominant team in the history of hockey, and then helped bring down the hockey system when the Soviet Union collapsed and became one of the first players to play in the NHL, and then ultimately came back to Russia. — Gabe Polsky

I grew up reading the classic novels of Cold War espionage, and I studied Russian history and Soviet foreign policy. — Daniel Silva

The link between literacy and revolutions is a well-known historical phenomenon. The three great revolutions of modern European history
the English, the French and the Russian
all took place in societies where the rate of literacy was approaching 50 per cent. Literacy had a profound effect on the peasant mind and community. It promotes abstract thought and enables the peasant to master new skills and technologies, Which in turn helps him to accept the concept of progress that fuels change in the modern world. — Orlando Figes

About the last Exodus:
Virtually every one of us Russian Jews had to choose between "to leave or not to leave" as it has been many times during the last two thousand years of Jewish history. — Leo Pevsner

In the history of Russian pessimism, the general decrepitude of the university buildings, the gloomy corridors, the grimy walls, the inadequate light, the dismal look of the stairs, cloakrooms and benches, occupy one of the foremost places in the series of causes predisposing...And here is our garden. It seems to have become neither better nor worse since I was a student. I don't like it. It would be much smarter if, instead of consumptive lindens, yellow acacias, and sparse trimmed lilacs, there were tall pines and handsome oaks growing here. The student, whose mood is largely created by the surroundings of his place of learning, should see at every step only the lofty, the strong, the graceful...God save him from scrawny trees, broken windows, gray walls, and doors upholstered with torn oilcloth. — Anton Chekhov

The scale and grandeur of the Russian effort mark it as the greatest military achievement in all history. — Douglas MacArthur

I got history solidly under my belt, reading Russian history and biographies. I couldn't change the facts. I could only play with how the people might have responded to the facts of their lives. — Kathryn Harrison

So eager were its officials that the German government had telegraphed its ambassador in St. Petersburg two declarations of war to be delivered to Russia's foreign minister: one if Russia did not reply to its ultimatum, the other rejecting the Russian reply as unsatisfactory. In his haste and confusion, the ambassador handed over both messages. — Adam Hochschild

Krebs, who knew some Russian and at one stage in his career had been embraced by Stalin, was "a smooth, surviving type." And so, with almost incredible effrontery, he tried to talk to Chuikov as an equal, opening the conversation with the general comment:
"Today is the first of May, a great holiday for our two nations ... "
With seven million Russian dead, half his country devastated, and fresh evidence mounting daily of the unspeakable barbarity with which the Germans had treated Soviet captives and civilians, Chuikov's answer was a model of restraint, a standing testimony to the cool head and dry wit of that remarkable man. He said:
"We have a great holiday today. How things are with you over there it is less easy to say. — Alan Clark

For dynamic energy, driving force, and discipline, the Russian Communist Party is unique the world over, perhaps even throughout history. — Louis Fischer

We also learned our own history and I was so grateful that such richness comes from our family stories. Now we will forever remember the day that a Russian cellist spoke the heart of Czech people. Rostropovich loved Prague and so he viewed that performance as a personal tragedy. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

What finally scuppered Napoleon's Europe was of course the fatal combination of the English Channel and the Russian winter; the same unlikely partnership that also did for Hitler's Europe. — Andrew Roberts

... and in the same way the innumerable people who took part in the war acted in accord with their personal characteristics, habits, circumstances and aims. They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it of their own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free. — Leo Tolstoy

In a new Russian colonialism that began in 2013, Russian leaders and propagandists imagined neighboring Ukrainians out of existence or presented them as sub-Russians. In characterizations that recall what Hitler said about Ukrainians (and Russians), Russian leaders described Ukraine as an artificial entity with no history, culture, and language, backed by some global agglomeration of Jews, gays, Europeans, and Americans. In — Timothy Snyder

The assassination of Allende quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Bohemia, the bloody massacre in Bangladesh caused Allende to be forgotten, the din of war in the Sinai Desert drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the massacres in Cambodia caused the Sinai to be forgotten, and so on, and on and on, until everyone has completely forgotten everything. — Milan Kundera

The roe of the Russian sturgeon has probably been present at more important international affairs than have all the Russian dignitaries of history combined. This seemingly simple article of diet has taken its place in the world along with pearls, sables, old silver, and Cellini cups. — James Beard

In the early days of the Russian Revolution in 1917, I was completely in sympathy with it. I felt that it established a new era in the history of the modern world. I was so overwhelmed by it that, if people made any unfriendly comment, I would vigorously defend it. If people condemned the Communist party, I would speak in its defense. — Chiang Kai-shek

We need to develop respect for our history, despite all of its flaws, and love for the Fatherland. We need to pay the utmost attention to our common moral values and consolidate Russian society on this basis. I think that this is an absolute priority. — Vladimir Putin

Yes, the burning of Moscow was especially Russian, my friend. Of that there can be no doubt. Because it was not a discrete event; it was the form of an event. One example plucked from a history of thousands. For as a people, we Russians have proven unusually adept at destroying that which we have created." Perhaps — Amor Towles

For the first time in world history the peasant was destined to find a leader in the person of the worker. In that lies the fundamental, and you may say the whole, difference between the Russian Revolution and all those preceding it. In — Leon Trotsky

Ballet is certainly appreciated in New York, but it has been a part of the Russian culture, history and heritage for hundreds of years, so it's much more instilled in the Russian blood. — David Hallberg

Early on, I learnt from the Russian intelligentsia that the only meaning of life lies in conscious participation in the making of history. The more I think of that, the more deeply true it seems to be. It follows that one must range oneself actively against everything that diminishes man, and involve oneself in all struggles which tend to liberate and enlarge him. This categorical imperative is by no way lessened by the fact that such an involvement is inevitably soiled by error: it is a worse error merely to live for oneself, caught within traditions which are soiled by inhumanity. — Victor Serge

Sad to say, in a present-day world that seems to be governed by clashing self
interests and material forces, where we have learned that idealistic rhetoric usually cloaks nationalistic purposes or even far more diabolical schemes, it has become increasingly difficult to explain collective actions that profess to be driven by virtuous ideals or a desire to make the world a better place. During the past century, various national leaders have ordered the slaughter of tens of millions of people as the supposedly necessary means to perfect the world. Today we are far more cynical, I fear, than the generations at the beginning of the past genocidal century, before the First World War and the Russian Revolution. — David Brion Davis

To be a Russian writer at the end of the nineteenth century must have meant bearing an inescapably bitter fate. The more they tried to escape from Russia, the more deeply Russia swallowed them. — Haruki Murakami

Peter the Great was probably the equal, in dedication, power and ruthlessness, of many of the most successful revolutionary or nationalist leaders. Yet he failed in his chief purpose, which was to turn Russia into a Western nation. And the reason he failed was that he did not infuse the Russian masses with some soul-stirring enthusiasm. He either did not think it necessary or did not know how to make of his purpose a holy cause. It is not strange that the Bolshevik revolutionaries who wiped out the last of the Czars and Romanovs should have a sense of kinship with Peter - a Czar and a Romanov. For his purpose is now theirs, and they hope to succeed where he failed. The Bolshevik revolution may figure in history as much an attempt to modernize a sixth of the world's surface as an attempt to build a Communist economy. The — Eric Hoffer

Eventually, a Soviet general sat down in the empty seat next to Howley. Rank-conscious, the Russian visibly shuddered when he realized he was sitting next to someone of much lower position. 'I see you're a colonel,' he said through an interpreter. Howley looked up from his plate and grumbled, 'I see you're a general. Here, have some salami. — Andrei Cherny

It was partly the war, the revolution did the rest. The war was an artificial break in life
as if life could be put off for a time
what nonsense! The revolution broke out willy-nilly like a sigh suppressed too long. Everyone was revived, reborn, changed, transformed. You might say that everyone has been through two revolutions
his own, personal revolution as well as the general one. It seems to me that socialism is the sea, and all these separate streams, these private, individual revolutions, are flowing into it
the sea of life, the sea of spontaneity. I said life, but I mean life as you see it in a great picture, transformed by genius, creatively enriched. Only now people have decided to experience it not in books and pictures, but in themselves, not as an abstraction but in practice. — Boris Pasternak

The feminine section of the proletarian army is of particularly great significance... the success of a revolution depends on the extent to which women take part in it. — Vladimir Lenin

Besides numerous science courses, I had the opportunity to study philosophy, the history of architecture, economics, and Russian history in courses taught by extraordinarily knowledgeable professors. — Stanley B. Prusiner

The Ukraine is still under Russian influence, even if they did give us independence. Ethnic Russians number 22% of our population. The facts remain they will control us economically. We will continue to owe them monetarily for the natural gas, the petroleum and all other industrial tools we need. After they've exhausted our scant resources and we have run up large bills, they will just walk right back in and take us over again. Monitor it closely in the years to come, Nicholas, you will see I am right. It could be easy to disregard this movement of mine, if it weren't for the queer twists and turns history takes from time to time. — Nicholas Anderson

Indeed, the KGB's nearly total control of the Russian Orthodox Church, both at home and abroad, is one of the most sordid and little known chapters in the history of our organization. — Oleg Kalugin

I am gay. I am a Jew. My mother lost over a dozen of her family to Hitler's anti-Semitism. Every time in Russia (and it is constantly) a gay teenager is forced into suicide, a lesbian 'correctively' raped, gay men and women beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs while the Russian police stand idly by, the world is diminished and I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself. — Stephen Fry

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. — Fareed Zakaria

The rational revolution, on its part, wants to realize the total man described by Marx. The logic of
history, from the moment that it is totally accepted, gradually leads it, against its most passionate
convictions, to mutilate man more and more and to transform itself into objective crime. It is not
legitimate to identify the ends of Fascism with the ends of Russian Communism. The first represents the
exaltation of the executioner by the executioner; the second, more dramatic
in concept, the exaltation of the executioner by the victims. The former never dreamed of liberating all
men, but only of liberating a few by subjugating the rest. The latter, in its most profound principle, aims
at liberating all men by provisionally enslaving them all. — Albert Camus

That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war. — David Benioff

And do you know, do you know that mankind can live without the Englishman, it can live without Germany, it can live only too well without the Russian man, it can live without science, without bread, and it only cannot live without beauty, for then there would be nothing at all to do in the world! The whole secret is here, the whole of history is here. Science itself would not stand for a minute without beauty — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I had a minor in Russian history, and this was at the time when the big Cold War was going on. — Kevin J. Anderson

As a graduate of the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, I am astonished by Tolstoy's absolute mastery at describing battles and military tactics. If I were teaching military history in any country in the world, I would make War and Peace required reading for anyone who held any ambition for advancement into the officer corps. It should be on the night table of the leader of every country who wishes to send troops into war. No writer has ever described the horror and anarchy of battle with more authority. It is one of the timeless lessons of War and Peace that no one, not Napoleon, nor the Tsar, nor the Russian general Katuzov, has any idea how a war is going to turn out once it is unleashed. Napoleon — Leo Tolstoy

In this country, we were not into detail. Europe developed detail." "Why do you think that is?" "Weather. The whole history of England consists of finding things to do out of the weather. Which tells you why Russia was even worse. That's why Russian novels have 182 characters: bad weather. — Ken Jennings

The full history of the interlocking participation of the Imperial German Government and international finance in the destruction of the Russian Empire is not yet written ... It is not a mere coincidence that at the notorious meeting held at Stockholm in 1916, between the former Russian Minister of the Interior, Protopopoff, and the German Agents, the German Foreign Office was represented by Mr. Warburg, whose two brothers were members of the international banking firm, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, of which the late Mr. Jacob Schiff was a senior member. — Boris Brasol

I have great love and respect for Russian history and culture. But the world is changing and Russia is too. Russia is part of the modern world, not the world of the past but the modern world. And I believe it has an even greater future than some other countries that can't take care of their young people, of the new generations, of their children, and believe that they can just let things slide. — Vladimir Putin

If the Russian people and the Russian elite remembered - viscerally, emotionally remembered - what Stalin did to the Chechens, they could not have invaded Chechnya in the 1990s, not once and not twice. To do so was the moral equivalent of postwar Germany invading western Poland. Very few Russians saw it that way - which is itself evidence of how little they know about their own history. — Anne Applebaum

Slavery has been outlawed in most arab countries for years now but there are villages in jordan made up entirely of descendants of runaway Saudi slaves. Abdulrahman knows he might be free, but hes still an arab. No one ever wants to be the arab - its too old and too tragic, too mysterious and too exasperating, and too lonely for anyone but an actual arab to put up with for very long. Essentially, its an image problem. Ask anyone, Persian, Turks, even Lebanese and Egyptians - none of them want to be the arab. They say things like, well, really we're indo-russian-asian european- chaldeans, so in the end the only one who gets to be the arab is the same little old bedouin with his goats and his sheep and his poetry about his goats and his sheep, because he doesnt know that he's the arab, and what he doesnt know wont hurt him. — Diana Abu-Jaber

The Russian action in Chechnya could be likened to the British Army reducing Edinburgh to rubble and expelling a couple of million Scottish people in response to a unilateral declaration of independence by Scotland — Amjad M. Jaimoukha

For virtually all the socialist revolutions of the twentieth century, it was not a crisis of the capitalist system, but imperialist war that pushed old orders into crisis... — S.A. Smith

The Russian revolution is one of history's car wrecks. We do know the ending, but we continue to watch. It expresses aspects of human nature we find unacceptable. — Kathryn Harrison

Eva Stachniak has given readers a thrilling glimpse into the scandals and secrets at the heart of the Russian Imperial court. With deft prose and exquisite detail, Stachniak has resurrected one of the most compelling ages in history. Turn off the phones and lock the doors - you will not put it down. — Deanna Raybourn

I grew up around books - my grandmother's house, where I lived as a small child, was full of books. My father was a history teacher, and he loved the Russian novels. There were always books around. — John Irving

Sitting at the table were three Russian prisoners of war that had been assigned to work on her husband's farm. Hesitantly, we sat down with these men. I couldn't understand a word they said and I couldn't know the awful circumstances under which I would see them again. We stayed at the farm that entire day and she let us sleep in a nice large bed, tucked under the eaves of the attic. It would have been perfect except that we didn't have any pillows or blankets but at least there wasn't a corpse in bed with us! The nights were getting cold this time of year, besides the Russians had made me feel considerably uncomfortable. When I asked her about her neighbors she avoided the question and so I thought it best to continue our search, in hopes of a better place to stay. — Hank Bracker

I was cursed with the pessimism of both the Russians and the Jews two of the gloomiest tribes in the world. Still if there wasn't greatness in me maybe I had the talent to recognize it in others even in the most irritating others. — David Benioff

Potemkin suffered bitterly from having nothing left to want. For when dreams turn into reality, there is an empty spot where the dreams used to be, and Potemkin had no dreams left. — Eleanor Herman

By sanctifying History in order to discredit God, Marxism has merely rendered Him more peculiar and more haunting. You can stifle every impulse in humanity except the need for an Absolute, which will survive the destruction of temples and even the disappearance of religion on earth. The core of the Russian people being religious, they will inevitably gain the upper hand ... — Emil Cioran