Russia quotes

My map of Africa liesin Europe.Here lies Russia and here lies France, and we are in the middle. That is my map of Africa.

-of)
Remarking on his preoccupation with European, as opposed to colonial, territorial concerns. Quoted in  A  J P  Taylor The Struggle for Mastery in Europe1848^1918 (1954), p.294. Canadian scholar anduniversity administrator, President of the University ofToronto (1958^71).

There is no nation on the continent of Europe that is less able to do harm to England, and there isno nation on the continent of Europe to whom we are less able to do harm, than Russia.We are so separate that it seems impossible that the two nations, by the use of reason or common sense at all, could possibly be brought into conflict with each other.

-John Bright
  Speech, Birmingham,13  Jan.

Russia is my home†and for everything that I have in my soul I am obligated to Russia and its people. Andthis is the main thingobligated to its language.

- Ioseph Brodsky
  In the NewYork Times,1 Oct.

It is a superstition of an antiquated diplomacy that there is any necessaryantagonism between Russia and Great Britain. 202

-of Salisbury
  Speech, London Guildhall, 9 Nov.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped inside a mystery inside an enigma.But perhaps there is a key; that key is Russian national interest.

- Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
  Radio broadcast,1 Oct.

From Russia with Love.

- Ian Lancaster Fleming
   Title of novel.

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.

- Lillian Florence Hellman
   Journal entry, 30  Apr. Collected in  An Unfinished Woman (1969), ch.13.

Russia has two generals in whom she can confideJanvier and Fe  vrier.

-Nicholas I
  Referring to the severe Russian winter climate. Quoted in Punch,10 Mar.

Writers are much more esteemed in Russia, they playa much larger part in society thantheydo in theWest.The advantage of not being free is that people listen to you.

- C(harles) P(ercy), 1st Baron Snow
Interview on Radio Moscow.

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

- Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
  In the Listener,15 Feb.

The world is in flames today for a cause that interests Russia first and foremost; a cause that is essentially the cause of the Slavs, and which is of no concern to France or to England.

- Sergei Yulevich Witte
  Said to the French Ambassador,10 Sep.

The West has not lived through totalitarianism, with a single ideology for 70 years.We are escaping from the burden of the past, and onlyafter we have done that will we be ready to integrate with Europeand Europe needs Russia.

- Boris Yeltsin
  Addressing socialist MPs in Strasbourg,15 Apr.