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Russia

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Russia has only two allies; its army and navy. ~ Alexander III of Russia

Russia (Russian: Росси́йская Федера́ция), also known as the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world by area, and encompasses more than one-eighth of Earth's inhabited land area. Russia extends across eleven time zones, and has the most borders of any country in the world, adjoining sixteen sovereign nations. It has a population of 146.2 million; and is the most populous country in Europe, and the ninth-most populous country in the world. Moscow, the capital, is the largest city in Europe, while Saint Petersburg is the nation's second-largest city and cultural centre. Russians are the largest Slavic and European nation; they speak Russian, the most spoken Slavic language, and the most spoken native language in Europe.

The country originated from the Kievan' Rus formed in the 9th century, which converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 988. The Grand Duchy of Moscow formed during the Middle Ages gradually expanded into the Russian Empire by the 18th century. Russia remained an absolute monarchy until World War I, when its government was overthrown in a revolution that led to the establishment of the Soviet Union, a Communist government founded by Vladimir Lenin. Despite mass death and totalitarianism under Lenin and his successor Joseph Stalin, the USSR rapidly industrialized in the 1930s, defeated an invasion by Nazi Germany during World War II, and occupied Eastern and Central Europe. The USSR became a global superpower during the Cold War competing for influence against the United States. The USSR and its sphere of influence collapsed between 1985 and 1991, and it was replaced by a federal semi-presidential republic and capitalist economy in the 1990s. However, it experienced democratic backsliding in the 21st century, and has bad relations with the United States, the European Union, and NATO, due to its authoritarianism and its invasion of Ukraine.

Despite the fall of the USSR, Russia remains powerful. It is a major producer of oil and natural gas, has the largest nuclear weapons stockpile in the world, and is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. It also is a founding member of the CIS, the CSTO, the EEU, the SCO, BRICS, and the G20. Its current head of state is President Vladimir Putin, and its current head of government is Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

There are things in Russia which are not as they seem.
~ Georgy Zhukov
The Russians are a queer mixture of strength and weakness. They have got a passion in their intellect, say, a passionate intellect. They have a distracted and restless emotional being, but there is something behind it which is very fine and psychic, though their soul is not very healthy. ~ Sri Aurobindo

Quotes

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  • I’ve been taught to hate the Russians/All through my whole life/If another war comes/It’s them we must fight/To hate them and fear them/To run and to hide/And accept it all bravely/With God on my side
  • Russians may be unique, just like all peoples are, but this does not mean that they are uniquely bad. Or, to put it differently, being good is hard if you live under an authoritarian regime. As the war rages on and anti-Russian sentiment grows, the temptation to see the Russian people as perpetrators rather than victims also grows. But to view them this way obscures something more fundamental: They too are victims, because they have been gradually stripped of their status as free moral agents. This is by design. Authoritarian leaders aim to implicate their own people in their crimes, which in turn allows them to both spread and dilute political responsibility. If responsibility is spread across the population, then so is guilt. To repudiate Putin would mean repudiating themselves.
  • A lot of Russian Jews are determined to stay in Russia and want to develop their Jewish identity. Their heritage in Russia is Yiddish-based.
    • Irena Klepfisz 1997 interview in Meaning and Memory: Interviews with Fourteen Jewish Poets by Gary Pacernick (2001)
  • Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations—such is the national program that Marxism, the experience of the whole world, and the experience of Russia, teach the workers.
    • Vladimir Lenin, "The Right of Nations to Self-Determination", reported in Vladimir Lenin; Doug Lorimer (2002). Marxism & Nationalism. Resistance Books, p. 125. ISBN 1876646136.
  • Russia has made its choice in favor of democracy. Fourteen years ago, independently, without any pressure from outside, it made that decision in the interests of itself and interests of its people — of its citizens. This is our final choice, and we have no way back. There can be no return to what we used to have before. And the guarantee for this is the choice of the Russian people, themselves. No, guarantees from outside cannot be provided. This is impossible. It would be impossible for Russia today. Any kind of turn towards totalitarianism for Russia would be impossible, due to the condition of the Russian society.
  • People in Russia say that those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those that do regret it have no brain. We do not regret this, we simply state the fact and know that we need to look ahead, not backwards. We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move. But we must act based on a clear understanding of what happened..
  • There are things in Russia which are not as they seem.
    • Georgy Zhukov, as quoted in "Mandate for Change, 1953-1956: The White House Years" - Page 518 - by Dwight David Eisenhower - 1963
The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves. ~ Abraham Lincoln
Russia... Where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
~ Abraham Lincoln


Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

Quotes about

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A

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  • Russia has only two allies; its army and navy.
  • If Russia is to be a great power, it will be, not because of its nuclear potential, faith in God or the president, or Western investment, but thanks to the labor of the nation, faith in knowledge and science and the maintenance and development of scientific potential and education.
  • You don't fight Russia and America. You get Russia and America to fight each other, and destroy each other.
  • The Russians are a queer mixture of strength and weakness. They have got a passion in their intellect, say, a passionate intellect. They have a distracted and restless emotional being, but there is something behind it which is very fine and psychic, though their soul is not very healthy. And therefore I am not right in saying that Gandhi is a Russian Christian, because he is so very dry. He has got the intellectual passion and a great moral will-force, but he is more dry than the Russians. The gospel of suffering that he is preaching has its root in Russia as nowhere else in Europe... other Christian nations don't believe in it. At the most they have it in the mind, but the Russians have got it in their very blood. They commit a mistake in preaching the gospel of suffering, but we also commit in India a mistake in preaching the idea of vairagya [disgust with the world].
    • Sri Aurobindo, June 22, 1926 quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri Aurobindo's writing, talks and speeches. Paris: Institut de Recherches Evolutives. 3rd Edition (2000). [1]
  • Russia is a geriatric maritime giant surrounded by much more energetic rivals.

B

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You know, I never planned to leave. I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. You know, I played their game, pretending, of course.
~ Mikhail Baryshnikov
He’d be a ruin by now, both physically and mentally. Physically because of the bottle. . . .
Mentally because of that mixture of impotence and cynicism that corrodes everyone there — the stronger you are the worse it is.
~ Joseph Brodsky on what would have become of his friend
Mikhail Baryshnikov, had he stayed in Russia
I hate to say it [...] but, after the novelty wore off, I had this cliché moment of a Russian émigré abroad: I really missed black bread. I know it’s stupid, but I really missed it.
~ Alexei Navalny, about when he lived in the US.
Ilyin insisted that his nation was a creature, “an organism of nature and the soul,” an animal in Eden without original sin. Who belonged within the Russian organism was not for the individual to decide, since cells do not decide whether they belong to a body.
~ Timothy D. Snyder
​Little soldiers, brave little guys,
And who is your esteemed?
– Our esteemed, the invincible Tsar
That's who our esteemed is.
Little soldiers, brave little guys,
Do you have a darling?
– There's a darling, our dear mother,
Our Holy Rus'.
Little soldiers, brave little guys,
Where is your glory?
– Our glory is the Russian state – That's where our glory is.
Soldiers, brave little guys,
Where are your grandfathers?
– Our grandfathers are [the] glorious victories,
That's where our grandfathers are.
~ Soldatushki, marching song popular in the 19th century.[1]
Here is the pace. (Starts at 0:30)
We can only pity the Poles. We are too powerful to hate them, the war that will break out will be a war of extermination – or at least it should be.
~ Alexander Pushkin on the November Uprising, 1830
Farewell, unwashed Russia,
Land of slaves, land of masters,
And you, blue uniforms,
And you, people, devoted to them.
Perhaps beyond the wall of the Caucasus,
I will hide from your pashas,
From their all-seeing eye,
From their all-hearing ears.
– Mikhail Lermontov
Your Great Russian dream is to sit up to the neck in shit, and drag everyone else down there. That's what Russism is. ~ Shamil Basayev
You know what impresses me more about Russia than its T-80 tanks and MiG-31 fighters? The writing of Tolstoy, Pushkin, and Dostoyevsky. The music of Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky. The scientific achievements of Lomonosov and the engineering genius of Tsiolkovsky. What these brilliant Russians achieved will still be spoken of long after...
~ Jeffrey Evan Brooks
Western European humanity moves by will and reason. A Russian person lives first of all with his heart and imagination, and only then with his will and mind. Therefore, the average European is ashamed of sincerity, conscience and kindness [regarding it] as "stupidity"...
...a Russian person, on the contrary, expects from a person, first of all, kindness, conscience and sincerity.
~ Ivan Ilyin
  • In the 21st century, nations cannot; and we cannot allow them to redraw borders by force. These are the ground rules. And if we fail to uphold them, we will rue the day. Russia has violated these ground rules and continues to violate them. Today Russia is occupying sovereign Ukrainian territory. Let me be crystal clear: The United States does not, will not, never will recognize Russia’s attempt to annex the Crimea. It’s that saying -- that simple. There is no justification.
  • The Russians are fascinating, ingenious, creative, sentimental, warm-hearted, generous, obstinately courageous, endlessly tough, often devious, brutal and ruthless. Ordinary Russians firmly believe that they are warmer-hearted than others, more loyal to their friends, more willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good, more devoted to the fundamental truths of life. They give the credit to the Russian soul, as broad and all-embracing as the Russian land itself. Their passionate sense of Russia’s greatness is paradoxically undermined by an underlying and corrosive pessimism. And it is tempered by resentment that their country is insufficiently understood and respected by foreigners.
  • Russia's only real geostrategic option - the option that would give Russia a realistic international role and also maximize the opportunity of transforming and socially modernizing itself - is Europe.
  • The key point to bear in mind is that Russia cannot be in Europe without Ukraine also being in Europe, whereas Ukraine can be in Europe without Russia being in Europe.

C

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A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. ~ Winston Churchill
Russia’s long authoritarian traditions condition it to view its relations with other countries in terms of pure power.
Russia does not have friends. It has competitors and it has vassals.
~ Christian Caryl
  • The Russians have sometimes said one thing and done another... The Russians have been way off track since the very beginning. They have not done what they said they were going to do and they are not doing what is in their interest to do in terms of fighting... Thinking of Russia as a competitor was not something that we had to do, and now... We are going to have a competitor in Russia... Sadly, Russian conduct in Europe makes that necessary... But, I don't think that's in the long-term interest of the Russian people... Russia's a country I've worked with a lot over the years.
  • This faith in the power of schmoozing has deep roots in American politics, where a lot depends on negotiation, dialogue and dealmaking. But Moscow doesn’t work that way. Russia’s long authoritarian traditions condition it to view its relations with other countries in terms of pure power. Russia does not have friends. It has competitors and it has vassals. Vassals are countries that pay rhetorical tribute to Moscow and follow its lead on everything that matters — usually because they are deeply dependent on Russia for security, economic support or energy supplies. It’s no coincidence that its current vassal states — such as Belarus, Armenia and Kazakhstan — are themselves corrupt autocracies, which makes it easier for the Kremlin to work with them.
  • "Never mind," he repeated. "Yours is not the worst of sorrows. Life is long, there will be good and bad to come, there will be everything. Great is mother Russia," he said, and looked round on each side of him. "I have been all over Russia, and I have seen everything in her, and you may believe my words, my dear. There will be good and there will be bad. I went as a delegate from my village to Siberia, and I have been to the Amur River and the Altai Mountains and I settled in Siberia; I worked the land there, then I was homesick for mother Russia and I came back to my native village. […]"
  • I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.
    • Winston Churchill, BBC radio address “The Russian Enigma” (October 1, 1939) (partial text); in Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897–1963 vol. 6 (1974), p. 6161.

D

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  • For more than five hundred years the cardinal problem in defining Europe has centred on the inclusion or exclusion of Russia.
  • My God, how much truth in the eyes of government whores!
    My God, how much faith in the hands of retired executioners!
    Don't you let them roll up their sleeves again, don't you let them roll up their sleeves again on fidgety nights.
    Original:
    Боже, сколько правды в глазах государственных шлюх!
    Боже, сколько веры в руках отставных палачей!
    Ты не дай им опять закатать рукава, ты не дай им опять закатать рукава суетливых ночей.
  • Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia.
    • Fyodor Dostoevsky, reported in Dominic Livien (April 1999). "Dilemmas of Empire 1850-1918: Power, Territory, Identity". Journal of Contemporary History 34 (2): p. 180.
Arise, Russia, from thy prison of slavery,
Victory's spirit calls: time for battle!
Rise thy battle flags
For Faith, Love, and Good.
~ Popular lyrics for the march Farewell of Slavianka, written in 1997.

E

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  • It would appear that the natural frontier of Russia runs from Dantzic or perhaps Stettin to Trieste.
    • Friedrich Engels, "The Real Issue in Turkey", Karl Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 12, p. 16 (1979). This article was originally published in The New York Daily Tribune, April 12, 1853, p. 4, and since that paper's European correspondent was at that time Karl Marx, it has generally been assumed the author was Marx. Collected Works, vol. 12, p. 639, note 17, makes it clear that Engels was the author.

F

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In a Russian tragedy, everybody dies. In a Russian comedy, everybody dies, too. But they die happy. ~ Barry Farber
  • In a Russian tragedy, everybody dies. In a Russian comedy, everybody dies, too. But they die happy.
    • Barry Farber, radio talk-show host in New York City, during a program on radio station WMCA; reported in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
  • Russian leaders and regular citizens have felt increasingly insecure... They have a sense that Russia is under siege from without and has been robbed of its rightful status as a world power... Europeans at least have recourse at the ballot box; they can angrily vote in or out whoever they like. Russians do not enjoy the luxury of democracy. Russians do not enjoy the luxury of democracy... The U.S. is many times more powerful and influential than Russia.

G

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The less you know, the better you sleep.
Russian proverb
Pictured: the 1999 apartment bombings.
My God, how much truth in the eyes of government whores!
My God, how much faith in the hands of retired executioners!
~ "Родина" (Homeland), by the rock band DDT.
Listen to it here.
Russia has become an assassination-happy state.
~ Reuel Gerecht
Only in Russia is poetry respected – it gets people killed.
~ Osip Mandelstam
  • Russia is a new phenomenon in Europe: a state defined and dominated by former and active-duty security and intelligence officers. Not even fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union – all undoubtedly much worse creations than Russia; were as top-heavy with intelligence talent... There is no historical precedent for a society so dominated by former and active-duty internal-security and intelligence officials; men who rose up in a professional culture in which murder could be an acceptable, even obligatory, business practice... Those who operated within the Soviet sphere were the most malevolent in their practices. These men mentored and shaped Putin and his closest friends and allies. It is therefore unsurprising that Putin's Russia has become an assassination-happy state where detention, interrogation, and torture; all tried and true methods of the Soviet KGB; are used to silence the voices of untoward journalists and businessmen who annoy or threaten Putin's FSB state.
  • Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.
  • If the Russian word "perestroika" has easily entered the international lexicon, this is due to more than just interest in what is going on in the Soviet Union. Now the whole world needs restructuring, i.e. progressive development, a fundamental change.
  • Preparing for my address I found in an old Russian encyclopedia a definition of "peace" as a "commune" — the traditional cell of Russian peasant life. I saw in that definition the people's profound understanding of peace as harmony, concord, mutual help, and cooperation. This understanding is embodied in the canons of world religions and in the works of philosophers from antiquity to our time.
  • No one is in a position to describe in detail what perestroika will finally produce. But it would certainly be a self-delusion to expect that perestroika will produce "a copy" of anything. [...] Our democracy is being born in pain. A political culture is emerging — one that presupposes debate and pluralism, but also legal order and, if democracy is to work, strong government authority based on one law for all. This process is gaining strength.
  • The mutual trust that emerged with the end of the Cold War was severely shaken a few years later by NATO's decision to expand to the east. Russia had no option but to draw its own conclusions from that.

H

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  • Our attitude towards Europe and Europeans is still that of provincials towards the dwellers in a capital: we are servile and apologetic, take every difference for a defect, blush for our peculiarities and try to hide them, and confess our inferiority by imitation. The fact is that we are intimidated: we have never got over the sneers of Peter the Great and his coadjutors, or the superior airs of French tutors and Germans in our Civil Service. Western nations talk of our duplicity and cunning: they believe we want to deceive them, when we are only trying to make a creditable appearance and pass muster. A Russian will express quite different political views in talking to different persons, without any ulterior object, and merely from a wish to please: the bump of complaisance is highly developed in our skulls.
  • As sons and daughters of the Russian Orthodox Church, we are all citizens of Holy Russia. When we speak of Holy Russia, we are not talking about the Russian Federation or any civil society on earth; rather, it is a way of life that has been passed down to us through the centuries by such great saints of the Russian Land as the Holy Great Prince Vladimir and Great Princess Olga, Venerable Sergius of Radonezh, Job of Pochaev, Seraphim of Sarov, and more recently, the countless New Martyrs and Confessors of the 20th century. These saints are our ancestors, and we must look to them for instruction on how to bravely confess the Faith, even when facing persecution. There is no achievement in simply calling oneself "Russian:" in order to be a genuine Russian, one must first become Orthodox and live a life in the Church, as did our forebears, the founders of Holy Russia!
  • Our role in Russia will be analogous to that of England in India... The Russian space is our India. Like the English, we shall rule this empire with a handful of men.
    • Adolf Hitler, attributed and quoted in Michael Burleigh, Nazi Europe: what if, in Niall Ferguson, Virtual History, 1998, p. 330, also in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". I.525

I

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  • Western European humanity moves by will and reason. A Russian person lives first of all with his heart and imagination, and only then with his will and mind. Therefore, the average European is ashamed of sincerity, conscience and kindness [regarding it] as "stupidity"; A Russian person, on the contrary, expects from a person, first of all, kindness, conscience and sincerity.
    Original: Западноевропейское человечество движется волею и рассудком. Русский человек живет прежде всего сердцем и воображением и лишь потом волею и умом. Поэтому средний европеец стыдится искренности, совести и доброты как «глупости»; русский человек, наоборот, ждет от человека прежде всего доброты, совести и искренности.
  • Ukraine is recognized as the most threatened part of Russia in terms of secession and conquest. Ukrainian separatism is an artificial phenomenon, devoid of real grounds. It arose from the ambition of the leaders and the international intrigue of conquest.
    Little Russians are a branch of a single, Slavic-Russian people. This branch has no reason to be at enmity with other branches of the same people and to separate into a separate state.
    Having seceded, this state betrays itself to be conquered and plundered by foreigners.
    Little Russia and Great Russia are bound together by faith, tribe, historical fate, geographical location, economy, culture and politics.
    The foreigners who are preparing the dismemberment must remember that they are declaring by this to the whole of Russia a centuries-old struggle. There will be no peace and no economic prosperity under such a dismemberment.
    Russia will turn into a source of civil and international wars for centuries. The dismembering power will become the most hated of the enemies of national Russia.
    In the struggle against it, all alliances and all means will be used. Russia will shift its center to the Urals, gather all its huge forces, develop its technology, find powerful allies for itself and fight until it completely and forever undermines the power of the dismembering power.
    National Russia is not looking for anyone's death, but it will be able to respond in time to any attempt at dismemberment and will fight to the end. It is more profitable for any power to have Russia as a friend, not an enemy. History hasn't said its last word yet...

K

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Russia’s economic, information, and diplomatic powers are highly contextual and often geographically limited. ~ Michael Kofman
  • I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing; it's not a western invention. It's probably the most affordable mechanism to solve problems inside the country, inside the society because Putin proved to all of us that democracy has a world of alternatives, security forces and police and power abuse and that's why I think eventually the people of Russia will embrace democracy as the least costly institution to help them to solve their daily problems.
    • Garry Kasparov, statement in interview: Monica Attard (April 3, 2005). "Gary Kasparov", Sunday Profile, Australian Broadcasting Company.
  • I think many Russians, but also a lot of Westerners, make a very serious mistake in trying to look for… a better person to become president. They are searching for such a person in [Alexei] Navalny, in myself, but that’s a mistake. Anyone who replaces Putin is going to take Russia along the same imperialist route.
    [...] It is a very large and very diverse country, and if you want to manage it from one central spot, you have to have a very strong bureaucratic apparatus.
    To have such a huge apparatus at the centre has to be explained by having to protect the country from an outside enemy – there is no other explanation that people will accept.
  • The existence of Russia is of a great spiritual and cultural value – not only for you and me, but for all humanity. And we are calling for the preservation of the people of Russia, for the birth of our new compatriots, not only and not so much because these people are needed by the country, but also to a great extent because this country is needed by people. Russia must exist and play its irreplaceable role in our destiny with you, in the destiny of our descendants and throughout world history.

    The special value of Russia, its special vocation is to be a stronghold of Orthodox Christianity. To preserve the Orthodox faith, Orthodox tradition and culture, Christian moral principles intact. Maybe that is why the powers that be are so ganged up on the Russian Orthodox Church, wanting to tear away the Greek Orthodox world from the Russian Church, wanting to destroy the unity of the Orthodox Church. We possess reliable information that everything that is happening now in world Orthodoxy is not an accident, not just the whim of a religious figure whose mind has become clouded. This is the implementation of a very specific plan that aims to tear the Greek world away from Russia. According to the perpetrators — I cannot describe these strategists in any other way — the Russian Church appears to be some kind of “soft power”, through which Russia influences the world around it. But why can’t Russia share its spiritual gifts? Is it criminal? This can be criminal only in the view of those who seek to weaken, and if possible to destroy the influence of Russia. In this whole story related to the problem of recognition or non-recognition of Ukrainian schismatics by the Local Orthodox Churches, there is something that is not declared, but which is the main goal of the forces behind the scenes that unleashed this schismatic activity. We in the Russian Church understand this clearly, but today our brothers in Greece and other Orthodox Churches also understand this. We are being asked to resist, not to flinch, to continue the struggle to maintain the spiritual independence of the Russian Orthodox Church from all these centres of world influence, and most importantly – to maintain the unity of Universal Orthodoxy. This is not a simple task. The Church has no army. The Church has no material means. So it is not easy without material means to build the spiritual defense.

L

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  • If Russia and NATO cooperate, who are they going to be against? There used to be two systems, two military blocs. One system collapsed. Its military bloc collapsed. And the other part remains in perfect operating order. That beautiful NATO bloc was first aimed at the Soviet Union, and it would be a pity to abandon it. So, now it is re-aimed at Russia.
  • If I see that the Russians are amassing their planes for an attack, I'm going to knock the shit out of them before they take off the ground.
    • Curtis LeMay, conversation with presidential commissioner Robert Sprague (September 1957), quoted in Kaplan, F. (1991). The Wizards of Armageddon. Stanford University Press, p. 134.
  • Farewell, unwashed Russia,
    Land of slaves, land of masters,
    And you, blue uniforms,
    And you, people, devoted to them.
    Perhaps beyond the wall of the Caucasus,
    I will hide from your pashas,
    From their all-seeing eye,
    From their all-hearing ears.
    • Mikhail Lermontov, in his final exile in the Caucasus, 1841. Published by Russky Arkhiv. Historical and literary collection (1890) Translation by Anatoly Liberman.
      • Original:
        Прощай, немытая Россiя,
        Страна рабовъ, страна господъ,
        И вы, мундиры голубые,
        И ты, имъ преданный народъ.
        Быть можетъ, за стѣной Кавказа
        Сокроюсь отъ твоихъ пашей,
        Отъ ихъ всевидящаго глаза,
        Отъ ихъ всеслышащихъ ушей.
  • As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.' When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be take pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.


...Russia is not by any means without faults. But the amount of anti-Russian propaganda in our media today is a throwback to the Cold War era. We must ask the question: Is this leading to more arms, a bigger NATO?...The demonization of Russia is, I believe, one of the most dangerous things that is happening in our world today... It is time for political leaders and each individual to move us back from the brink of catastrophe to begin to build relationships with our Russian brothers and sisters. Too long has the elite financially gained from war while millions are moved into poverty and desperation. ~Mairead Maguire

M

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From the southern seas to the polar lands. Spread are our forests and fields. You are unique in the world, one of a kind. This native land protected by God!
~ National anthem of the Russian Federation
  • How did it happen? We saw it come about in front of our very eyes. All intermediate social links, such as the family, one's circle of friends, class, society itself-each abruptly disappeared, leaving every one of us to stand alone before the mysterious force embodied in the State, with its powers of life and death. In ordinary parlance, this was summed up in the word "Lubianka." If what we have seen in this country is only a process taking place throughout Europe, then it must be said that we have demonstrated the sickness of the age in a form so acute and unadulterated as to merit special study in any search for the prevention and cure of it. In an age when the main cry is "Every man for himself," the personality is doomed.
    • Nadezhda Mandelstam Hope Abandoned (1974) chapter 1, Translated from the Russian by Max Hayward
  • Only in Russia poetry is respected – it gets people killed. Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a motive for murder?
  • It's the principle of... freedom is better than non-freedom. These words are the quintessence of the human experience.
    Original: Это принцип "свобода лучше, чем несвобода". Эти слова - квинтэссенция человеческого опыта.

N

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  • I hate to say it [...] but, after the novelty wore off, I had this cliché moment of a Russian émigré abroad: I really missed black bread. I know it’s stupid, but I really missed it.
  • A cocktail of patriotism, chauvinism, imperialism could for some time replace many essential nutrients for Russians. Like how for alcoholics vodka replaces everything, including toothpaste.
    Original: Коктейль из патриотизма, шовинизма, империализма на какое-то время может заменить россиянам многие необходимые питательные вещества. Как алкоголикам водка заменяет все, включая зубную пасту.
  • It is clear that if Putin converts to Buddhism tomorrow, they will fill wastebaskets in their luxurious offices with all these icons, draw a scarlet spot between their eyebrows and sing “Om mani padme hum”.
    Original: Понятно, что если завтра Путин примет буддизм, то они всеми этими иконками набьют мусорные корзины в своих роскошных кабинетах, нарисуют себе алое пятно между бровями и будут петь «Ом мани падме хум».
  • If a person wants to be the king of the Papuans, then he is doomed to stick large feathers into his head, wear necklaces from the largest shells and dance certain dances the fastest of all.
    Original: Если человек хочет быть королём папуасов, то он обречён втыкать себе в голову большие перья, одевать ожерелья из самых больших ракушек и резвее всех танцевать определённые танцы.

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We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, but merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago.
  • How likely is doomsday? Well back to Ukraine, regarding which, on December 1, Russian President Putin asked the west for legal guarantees that it would cease eastward expansion. This request, made because Washington’s word is worthless (vide just for starters, the Iran nuclear pact, and President George H.W. Bush’s promise that NATO would never, ho, ho, expand to Russia’s borders) and met with scoffs by the white house, comes amid complicated tensions. The Kiev military recently claimed it used Turkish attack drones “in combat against ethnic Russian rebels,” Finian Cunningham reported October 28 in Information Clearing House. This is not good. Turkey is in NATO. If Turkey gets tangled up in the Ukraine imbroglio, that substantially escalates things. According to Anatol Lieven in Responsible Statecraft on November 24, “Moscow is especially alarmed by Ukraine’s acquisition of Turkish Bayraktar combat drones,” used to such deadly effect by Azerbaijan in its 2020 conquest of Armenian territory. Unlike the F-35, these things actually work.

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Russia is not corrupt. Corruption is what happens in all countries when businessmen offer officials large bribes for favors. Today’s Russia is unique. The businessmen, the politicians, and the bureaucrats are the same people. They have privatized the country’s wealth and taken control of its financial flows. ~ Andrei Piontkovsky
Russia is in favor of a multipolar world, a democratic world order, strengthening the system of international law, and for developing a legal system in which any small country, even a very small country, can feel itself secure, as if behind a stone wall. ~Vladimir Putin[citation needed]
  • Russian is very dear to me because it’s a family language, but I am Jewish-Russian, which is a little different from Russian-Russian. My family ran away in 1905 from the Russian-Russians.
  • They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.
    • Sarah Palin, to Charles Gibson, ABC News, September 11, 2008.
      • This was parodied as "I can see Russia from my house", on "Saturday Night Live", a comedy television show, two days later, by Tina Fey. Fey resembled Palin in appearance, and was portraying Palin, and so the latter quote is often misattributed to Palin.
  • Russia is not corrupt. Corruption is what happens in all countries when businessmen offer officials large bribes for favors. Today’s Russia is unique. The businessmen, the politicians, and the bureaucrats are the same people. They have privatized the country’s wealth and taken control of its financial flows.
  • The Russian people will suffer a blow, it will leave the cities for fields, forests ... It will pick mushrooms, berries, nuts - the Russian people is ready in a moment of great sorrow to turn into a chipmunk people, a hamster people, it will store up for the winter all sorts of roots, all sorts of onions.
    Original: Русский народ перебьётся, он уйдёт из городов в поля, в леса... Будет собирать грибы, ягоды, орехи — русский народ готов в минуту больших печалей превратиться в народ-бурундук, народ-хомяк, он будет запасать на зиму всякие корешки, всякие луковки.
  • We can only pity the Poles. We are too powerful to hate them, the war that will break out will be a war of extermination – or at least it should be.
    Original: Nous ne pouvons que plaindre les Polonais. Nous sommes trop puissants pour les haïr, la guerre qui va s’ouvrir sera une guerre d’extermination — ou du moins devrait l’être.

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Look at Russia. They keep trying help each other out, extend a hand to a neighbor, and guess what? Every ten years, some one is invading, burning down their homes and taking their toilet paper.
~ Pastor Richards, GTA: Vice City
  • Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars.
    • Ayn Rand, as quoted in The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971).
  • Look at Russia. They keep trying help each other out, extend a hand to a neighbor, and guess what? Every ten years, some one is invading, burning down their homes and taking their toilet paper. Napoleon, Stalin, Attila the Hun, all of them. After you read my book you will understand. I may have been born in the see, but I'm no dummy!
  • All of this self-serving is driving America and its vassals to war with Russia, which might also mean with China. The war would be nuclear and be the end of the West, an act of self-genocide. The US national security establishment is so crazed that Trump’s efforts to get off the war track and onto a peace track are characterized as treason and a threat to US national security.
  • The Russians are aware that the accusations and demonization that they experience are fabrications. They no longer see the problem as one of misunderstandings that diplomacy can overcome. What they see now is the West preparing its populations for war. It is this perception for which the West is solely responsible that makes the situation today far more dangerous than it ever was during the long Cold War.

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  • ​Солдатушки​, бравы ребятушки, А кто вашъ родимый?
    – Нашъ родимый – Царь непобѣдимый, Вотъ кто нашъ родимый.
    Солдатушки​, бравы ребятушки, ​Есть​ у васъ родная?
    ​– Есть​ родная, мать намъ дорогая, Наша Русь святая.
    ​Солдатушки​, бравы ребятушки, Гдѣ же ваша слава?
    – Наша слава — Русская держава, Вотъ гдѣ наша слава.
    ​Солдатушки​, бравы ребятушки, Гдѣ же ваши дѣды?
    – Наши дѣды — ​славные​ побѣды, Вотъ гдѣ наши дѣды.
    Translation:
    ​Little soldiers, brave little guys,
    And who is your esteemed?
    – Our esteemed, the invincible Tsar
    That's who our esteemed is.
    Little soldiers, brave little guys,
    Do you have a darling?
    – There's a darling, our dear mother,
    Our Holy Rus'.
    Little soldiers, brave little guys,
    Where is your glory?
    – Our glory is the Russian state – That's where our glory is.
    Soldiers, brave little guys,
    Where are your grandfathers?
    – Our grandfathers are [the] glorious victories,
    That's where our grandfathers are.''
    * Soldatushki (little soldiers), Imperial army song popular in the 19th century. Note that many different versions exist, although always with similar format and pace.
We have now seen the weakness of Russia's democratic institutions, the ease with which a Russian leader can stoke nationalist hysteria. ~ Stephen Sestanovich
Russian society as a whole does not care if its leading scholars and scientists have a way to publish their research and discoveries and that nobody has the power to prevent abuses and torture by the police. ~ Ivan Sukhov
Freedom is better than non-freedom.
These words are the quintessence of the human experience. ~ Dmitry Medvedev
  • In Russia we only had two T.V. channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One.
    • Yakov Smirnoff, reported in Bob Fenster (2005). Laugh Off: The Comedy Showdown Between Real Life And The Pros. Andrews McMeel Publishing, p. 101. ISBN 0740754688.
  • Perhaps because of its proximity to Western Europe (China is much further away), its size (the biggest country in the world) and its out-of-focus familiarity (no country is simultaneously so exotic and ever-present) Russia has sometimes seemed a unique menace in Western eyes. This feeling, usually based on error and even more often on prejudice, has come and gone for at least five centuries. We might call it the Russia Anxiety. At its worst, it creates a preposterous bogeyman and is itself a threat to world peace, most catastrophically so in July 1914.
    • Mark B. Smith, The Russia Anxiety: And How History Can Resolve It (2019)
  • Although Ilyin dressed up his idea of contemplation in several books, it really was no more than that: he saw his own nation as righteous, and the purity of that vision was more important than anything Russians actually did. The nation, “pure and objective,” was what the philosopher saw when he blinded himself.
    Innocence took a specific biological form. What Ilyin saw was a virginal Russian body. Like fascists and other authoritarians of his day, Ilyin insisted that his nation was a creature, “an organism of nature and the soul,” an animal in Eden without original sin. Who belonged within the Russian organism was not for the individual to decide, since cells do not decide whether they belong to a body. Russian culture, Ilyin wrote, automatically brought “fraternal union” wherever Russian power extended. Ilyin wrote of “Ukrainians” in quotation marks, because he denied their separate existence beyond the Russian organism. To speak of Ukraine was to be a mortal enemy of Russia. Ilyin took for granted that a post-Soviet Russia would include Ukraine.
  • In 1944, investigator, proud of his faultless logic [...] told Babitsh: "Investigation and the process are merely juridical figaration, that can't change your destiny, which has been determined before. If it is necessary to shoot you, you'll be shot, even if you're completely innocent."
  • We forget everything. What we remember is not what actually happened, not history, but merely that hackneyed dotted line they have chosen to drive into our memories by incessant hammering.
  • Already for quite a few years we have been trying to crawl out from under the rubble of communism. But through the mistakes of our governments and of the people itself, we are crawling out by way of the most burdensome, crooked and inefficient path and with the most possible victims. Such are also our chosen methods of economic reform. And such is the filth of our spiritual atmosphere! For not a single one of the former oppressors and even the executioners has been brought to justice. They haven't even repented. The whole communist elite has had time to simply change masks--some became "democrats," some became businessmen--but they have successfully held on to all the commanding positions, both in Moscow and in the provinces. The government structure that we have today is pseudo-democracy, since the people do not control the actions of the authorities, do not decide their own fate and have already lost hope in deciding it. The main problem in Russia today is the lack of initiative and stubborn self-reliance at the grass roots. Only from here, and not from above, can real power of the people be established.
  • The idea of a concentration camp is excellent.
  • Listen, there's been a campaign, a war against Russia going on for a long time. It started again in the United States around 2006, '07, when he made that speech in Munich, but I think there's no evidence really of the aggressiveness of Russia. The aggressiveness is truly coming from the NATO forces that have encircled Russia and that are also, by the way, encircling China. You know, this is a big policy point, huge, of huge importance... If you look at the reporting from all of our major networks, it's very hostile when it comes to people who we deem to be enemies, whether it's Chávez or whether it's Castro or Putin. I've never seen an interview done from the American perspective where they allow the subject to express himself in what he was seeking to do, what his purpose was.
  • Castro was very articulate, and so was Chavez, and so was Putin in his way, and I think I gave them a chance to talk and also in their native language. We never hear Putin speak in his native Russian, and we had a very good translator, interpreter working with him. I think it's crucial to understand Putin's point of view as it was Castro's, Chávez's. And also, Yasser Arafat, too.. It's not necessary to be their enemy. It's necessary to get them to express themselves. That's my point of view, and I guess you could say I'm a dramatist. And I think they're great stories. I'm very proud of those movies. I took a lot of heat, flack for the last one for Putin, but frankly, I'm very proud of it. It's a record for all time of a man who very few people have gotten to. Even the Russians tell me they've never seen their president so frank as he was on that interview.
    • Oliver Stone, Transcript: A Conversation with Oliver Stone, (streamed live on youtube) The Washington Post (12 May 2021)
  • Russian society as a whole does not care if its leading scholars and scientists have a way to publish their research and discoveries and that nobody has the power to prevent abuses and torture by the police... Russians have been more united during these last 18 difficult months than during the whole of the post-Soviet period. As they say, the person who holds the flag determines what is written on it.

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Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain — at least in a poor country like Russia — and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. ~ Leon Trotsky
  • Get ready for Russia to cast itself as the protector, not only of the Alawites but also of other minorities such as Turcoman, Armenians and, more interestingly for Moscow, Orthodox Christians who have fled Islamist terror groups such as ISIS. Russia has always seen itself as the “Third Rome” and the last standard-bearer of Christianity against both Catholic “deviation” and Islamist menace. By controlling a new mini-state, as a “safe haven for minorities,” Russia could insist that if Syria returns to some normality it be reconstituted as a highly decentralized state. This is what Putin is also demanding in Georgia and Ukraine. The Syrian coast will become another Crimea, if not completely annexed, at least occupied. Unless stopped, the Putin treatment will not end in Syria. The two next candidates could be Moldova and Latvia, both of which have large Russian-speaking minorities.
  • Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth--science--which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
    • Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, (1865-1869). Book 9, Chapter 10.
  • Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain — at least in a poor country like Russia — and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.
    • Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (1930). See edition: Leon Trotsky; Max Eastman (1957). The History of the Russian Revolution. University of Michigan Press, p. 213.
  • The Russians are like us... They are fine people. They got along with our soldiers in Berlin very well. As far as I am concerned, they can have whatever they want just so they don't try to impose their system on others.
    • Harry S. Truman, statement to a group of four congress freshmen (2 July 1947), as quoted in The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, p. 44
  • The Russians are liars; you can't trust them. At Potsdam they agreed to everything and broke their word. It's too bad the second world power is like this, but that's the way it is, and we must keep our strength.
  • Liberal Russophobia has become a powerful force responsible for deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations. The coalition of liberal Russophobes include those in Congress, media and think tanks who believe that Russia aims to destroy the U.S.-centered “liberal” international order and that President Donald Trump’s attempts to negotiate with the Kremlin do more harm than good. Those sharing these views also... want to take away from the president the prerogative of conducting relations with Russia.

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  • After the fall of the Soviet Union there was – for a time – a commonly held view that Russia had been a normal European state before the Communist experiment (and that it would return to being one after the end of Communism). The first part of that judgment is certainly untrue. The Russian empire, until the very end of its development, had very little in common with the other main European powers in terms of ideology or state structure. The prerevolutionary Russian elite of the nineteenth century was intent on overcoming what they saw as an age-old exclusion of Russia from the continent through recreating European culture under new and better circumstances. What the Europeans saw as backwardness was in reality, it was argued by many, a virgin opportunity to create a more genuine and unpolluted Christian civilization in the east, which, in time, would become the redeemer of a decadent and declining continent. Meanwhile, Russia remained an autocratic state, in which much of the elite’s legitimacy was built on continuous continental territorial expansion, especially, in the nineteenth century, towards the east and the south.
    • Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Intervention and the Making of Our Times (2012), p. 23

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See also

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  • Encyclopedic article on Russia on Wikipedia
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  • Russia travel guide from Wikivoyage


Notes

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  1. ↑ Note that many different versions exist, although always with similar format and pace.
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