Russian quotes

No one has been a more consistent opponent of Communism than I have for the last 25 years. I will unsay no word that I have spoken about it, but all that fades away before the spectacle that is now unfolding. The past, with its crimes, its follies, and its tragedies, flashes away.I seethe Russian soldiersstanding on thethreshold of their native land, guarding the fields that their fathers have tilled from time immemorial. Any man or state who fights on against Nazidom will have our aid. Any man or state who marches with Hitler is our foe.

- Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
Radio broadcast on the German invasionof Russia, 22  Jun.

   If the Russian word 'perestroika' has easily entered the international lexicon, it isduetomorethanjust interest in what isgoing on in the Soviet Union. Now the whole world needs restructuring; that is, progressive development, a fundamental change.

- Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
  Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World.

An intelligent Russian once remarked to me,'Every country has its own Constitution.Ours is absolutism moderated byassassination.'

- Count Georg Mu«  nster
Political Sketches of the State of Europe1814^1867

Es asombroso ver en que   se puede convertir la revolucio  n rusa a trave  s del cerebro de un comerciante yanqui; basta ver las fotos de las revistas norteamericanas, nada ma  s que las fotos porque no se leerlas, para comprender que nohay pueblo ma  s imbe  cil que e  se sobre la tierra; no puede haberlo porque tambie  n la capacidad de estupidez es limitada en la raza humana. It's astonishing to see what the Russian Revolution can become thanks to the brain of aYankee entrepreneur; you only have to see the photos in North American magazines, only the photos because I can't read them, to realize they're the most stupid people on earth; that's quite possible because even the human race has a limited potential for idiocy.

-Juan Carlos Onetti
  El pozo (translated as The Pit,1991).

Moscow†what surge that sound can start In every Russian's inmost heart!

- Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin
  EugeneOnegin, ch.7, stanza 36 (translatedbyAdrian Room, 1995).

The French are polite, but it is often mere ceremonious politeness. A Russian imbues his polite things with a heartiness that compels belief in their sincerity.

- Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain
  The Innocents Abroad.