Russian Czar Quotes

ROMANOFF: Every Russian family line ends in a czar. That’s the only way the genealogist gets paid, sir.

Whenever, wherever in the world there has been an upsurge of human freedom, women have won a share of it for themselves. Sex did not fight the French Revolution, free the slaves in America, overthrow the Russian Czar, drive the British out of India; but when the idea of human freedom moves the minds of men, it also moves the minds of women. The cadences of the Seneca Falls Declaration came straight from the Declaration of Independence: When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that they have hitherto occupied. . . . We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

All power has its derivation from God; the Russian Czar, however, was granted a special significance distinguishing him from the rest of the world's rulers…. He is a successor of the Caesars of the Eastern Empire,…the founders of the very creed of the Faith of Christ…. Herein lies the mystery of the deep distinction between Russia and all the nations of the world.

When the Red Army finally reached central Europe, its exhausted soldiers encountered another world. The contrast between Russia and the West was always great—Czar Alexander I had long ago regretted allowing Russians to see how Westerners lived—and it had grown even sharper during the war. While German soldiers wreaked devastation and mass murder in the East, Germany itself remained prosperous—so much so that its civilian population had very little sense of the material cost of war until quite late in the conflict. Wartime Germany was a world of towns, of electricity, of food and clothing and shops and consumer goods, of reasonably well-fed women and children. The contrast with his own devastated homeland must have seemed unfathomable to the common Soviet soldier.

At one stage in the heated intramural debate, ex-ACS president and longtime director Alton Ochsner took the floor and regaled his eminent colleagues with a tale intended to disarm those still unpersuaded by the proof against smoking. There was a certain Russian count, Ochsner told them, who, suspecting his attractive young wife of infidelity, advised her that he was leaving their home for an extended trip, but in fact posted himself at a nearby residence to spy on her. The very first night after his leave-taking, the count watched by moonlight as a sleigh pulled up to his house, a handsome lieutenant from the Czar's Guard bounded out, the count's wife greeted the hussar at the door and led him inside, and in a moment the couple was seen through an upstairs bedroom window in candlelit silhouette as they wildly embraced; after another moment the candle was blown out. "Proof! Proof!" said the anguished count, smiting himself on the brow. "If I only had the proof!

many were fresh immigrants from Eastern Europe who didn’t speak English. They considered any letter that bore a typed address some kind of government notice that meant immediate shipment of you, your family, your dog, and your green stamps back to the old country, where the Russian soldiers awaited with a special gift for your part in the murder of the czar’s son, who, of course, the Russians had killed themselves and poked his eyes out to boot, but who’s asking? So the flyers were tossed.

I sold my chastity for a book. If I had only resisted him, would I be here now? “I want you to read to me,” he murmured as he turned to the first page. I stared at the Cyrillic script. “I can’t. I don’t know how.” Simple conversational Russian was one thing, but the complex language of Jane Austen was another. “You will learn,” he informed me. “I will help you.” A small furrow appeared between his brows as he turned his eyes to the text. “It is generally accepted that a rich man should need a wife,” he read, butchering the classic first line. I

Chomsky was born and raised in Philadelphia, but his parents were among tens of thousands of Ashkenazic Jews who fled Russia following the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881.110 Jewish anarchists were singled out (falsely) as the assassins, setting off waves of the bloodiest pogroms in history. On top of that, thousands of Jews were forcibly removed from their homes in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and adjoining regions and led off, some in chains, to the so-called Pale of Settlement, a geographical ghetto along Russia’s western frontier. They risked severe punishment if they ventured beyond the Pale…pale, as in the pales of a fence. Even inside the Pale they were restricted from entering cities such as Kiev and Nikolaev, from owning or even leasing property, receiving a college education, or engaging in certain professions. By 1910, 90 percent of Russia’s Jews—5.6 million in all—were confined to the Pale.111 Anarchism had been a logical enough reaction. The word “anarchy” literally means “without rulers.” The Jewish refugees from Russian racial hatred translated that as not merely no more czars…but no more authorities of any sort…no public officials, no police, no army, no courts of law, no judges, no jailers, no banks—no money—no financial

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

Every public building carries monster portraits of him. We spoke of this to a number of Russians and had several answers. One was that the Russian people had been used to pictures of the czar and the czar’s family, and when the czar was removed they needed something to substitute for him. Another was that the icon is a Russian habit of mind, and this was a kind of an icon. A third, that the Russians love Stalin so much that they want him ever present. A fourth, that Stalin himself does not like this and has asked that it be discontinued. But it seemed to us that Stalin’s dislike for anything else causes its removal, but this is on the increase. Whatever the reason is, one spends no moment except under the smiling, or pensive, or stern eye of Stalin. It is one of those things an American is incapable of understanding emotionally. There are other pictures and other statues too. And one can tell approximately what the succession is by the size of the photographs and portraits of other leaders in relation to Stalin. Thus in 1936, the second largest picture to Stalin’s was of Voroshilov, and now the second largest picture is invariably Molotov.

We approached the long, heavily guarded causeway. There were soldiers at the entrance. Our names were taken, and our permissions scrutinized, and then a bell rang and a military escort went with us through the gate. We didn’t go to the side where the government offices are. We walked inside the huge place, past the old cathedrals which have been there for so long, and we went through the museums in the giant palace which was used by so many czars, from Ivan the Terrible on. We went into the tiny bedroom that Ivan used, and into the little withdrawing rooms, and the private chapels. And they are very beautiful, and strange, and ancient, and they are kept just as they were. And we saw the museum where the armor, the plate, the weapons, the china services, the costumes, and the royal gifts for five hundred years are stored. There were huge crowns covered with diamonds and emeralds, there was the big sledge of Catherine the Great. We saw the fur garments and the fantastic armor of the old boyars. There were the gifts sent by other royal houses to the czars—a great silver dog sent by Queen Elizabeth, presents of German silver and china from Frederick the Great to Catherine, the swords of honor, the incredible claptrap of monarchy. It became apparent, after looking at a royal museum, that bad taste, far from being undesirable in royalty, is an absolute necessity.

Moscow can be a cold, hard place in winter. But the big old house on Tverskoy Boulevard had always seemed immune to these particular facts, the way that it had seemed immune to many things throughout the years. When breadlines filled the streets during the reign of the czars, the big house had caviar. When the rest of Russia stood shaking in the Siberian winds, that house had fires and gaslight in every room. And when the Second World War was over and places like Leningrad and Berlin were nothing but rubble and crumbling walls, the residents of the big house on Tverskoy Boulevard only had to take up a hammer and drive a single nail—to hang a painting on the landing at the top of the stairs—to mark the end of a long war. The canvas was small, perhaps only eight by ten inches. The brushstrokes were light but meticulous. And the subject, the countryside near Provence, was once a favorite of an artist named Cézanne. No one in the house spoke of how the painting had come to be there. Not a single member of the staff ever asked the man of the house, a high-ranking Soviet official, to talk about the canvas or the war or whatever services he may have performed in battle or beyond to earn such a lavish prize. The house on Tverskoy Boulevard was not one for stories, everybody knew. And besides, the war was over. The Nazis had lost. And to the victors went the spoils. Or, as the case may be, the paintings. Eventually, the wallpaper faded, and soon few people actually remembered the man who had brought the painting home from the newly liberated East Germany. None of the neighbors dared to whisper the letters K-G-B. Of the old Socialists and new socialites who flooded through the open doors for parties, not one ever dared to mention the Russian mob. And still the painting stayed hanging, the music kept playing, and the party itself seemed to last—echoing out onto the street, fading into the frigid air of the night. The party on the first Friday of February was a fund-raiser—though for what cause or foundation, no one really knew. It didn’t matter. The same people were invited. The same chef was preparing the same food. The men stood smoking the same cigars and drinking the same vodka. And, of course, the same painting still hung at the top of the stairs, looking down on the partygoers below. But one of the partygoers was not, actually, the same. When she gave the man at the door a name from the list, her Russian bore a slight accent. When she handed her coat to a maid, no one seemed to notice that it was far too light for someone who had spent too long in Moscow’s winter. She was too short; her black hair framed a face that was in every way too young. The women watched her pass, eyeing the competition. The men hardly noticed her at all as she nibbled and sipped and waited until the hour grew late and the people became tipsy. When that time finally came, not one soul watched as the girl with the soft pale skin climbed the stairs and slipped the small painting from the nail that held it. She walked to the window. And jumped. And neither the house on Tverskoy Boulevard nor any of its occupants ever saw the girl or the painting again.

The German and Russian state apparatuses grew out of despotism. For this reason the subservient nature of the human character of masses of people in Germany and in Russia was exceptionally pronounced. Thus, in both cases, the revolution led to a new despotism with the certainty of irrational logic. In contrast to the German and Russia state apparatuses, the American state apparatus was formed by groups of people who had evaded European and Asian despotism by fleeing to a virgin territory free of immediate and effective traditions. Only in this way can it be understood that, until the time of this writing, a totalitarian state apparatus was not able to develop in America, whereas in Europe every overthrow of the government carried out under the slogan of freedom inevitably led to despotism. This holds true for Robespierre, as well as for Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. If we want to appraise the facts impartially, then we have to point out, whether we want to or not, and whether we like it or not, that Europe's dictators, who based their power on vast millions of people, always stemmed from the suppressed classes. I do not hesitate to assert that this fact, as tragic as it is, harbors more material for social research than the facts related to the despotism of a czar or of a Kaiser Wilhelm. By comparison, the latter facts are easily understood. The founders of the American Revolution had to build their democracy from scratch on foreign soil. The men who accomplished this task had all been rebels against English despotism. The Russian Revolutionaries, on the other had, were forced to take over an already existing and very rigid government apparatus. Whereas the Americans were able to start from scratch, the Russians, as much as they fought against it, had to drag along the old. This may also account for the fact that the Americans, the memory of their own flight from despotism still fresh in their minds, assumed an entirely different—more open and more accessible—attitude toward the new refugees of 1940, than Soviet Russia, which closed its doors to them. This may explain why the attempt to preserve the old democratic ideal and the effort to develop genuine self-administration was much more forceful in the United States than anywhere else. We do not overlook the many failures and retardations caused by tradition, but in any event a revival of genuine democratic efforts took place in America and not in Russia. It can only be hoped that American democracy will thoroughly realize, and this before it is too late, that fascism is not confined to any one nation or any one party; and it is to be hoped that it will succeed in overcoming the tendency toward dictatorial forms in the people themselves. Only time will tell whether the Americans will be able to resist the compulsion of irrationality or whether they will succumb to it.

a small town outside of Arizona, Sergei Zukov, a Russian drug czar, questioned a young woman tied to a chair in her own home,

Russian Jews remember just forty-three years earlier the arrests in 1905. Rumors were spread by the government that the czar had granted a constitution. This ruse exposed those who wanted a constitution. Anyone seen rejoicing in the streets, was swept up in mass arrests.

For a while, indeed, Stalin through sheer terrorism almost succeeded in turning himself into a Divine King in the image of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. he could be addressed, Russians have pointed out, only in the form that was used exclusively in the past in addressing a Czar. Stalin's solemn pronouncement on every subject from the mechanism of genetic inheritance to the origins of language were fatuously hailed as the voice of omniscience. So they became the ultimate guides to scholars and scientists who had spent their lifetime on research without ever reaching such ultimate and irrefragable truths. The same tendency later became magnified even to the point of gross caricature-if that were possible-in the pronouncements of Mao Tse-tung.

Russian Revolution and on Stalin, who was worse than the czars, killing his own people to collectivise agriculture.

Within three years, a Russian diplomat in Saint Petersburg who was an amateur experimenter, Baron Pavel L’vovitch Schilling, had begun designing a telegraph system based on Oersted’s discoveries. Schilling demonstrated the system to Czar Alexander I sometime before the Czar’s death in 1825.

the majority of Russians are materially better off than before, the cost in cruelty and tyranny has been no less and probably greater than under the czars. The French Revolution, great prototype of populist government, reverted rapidly to

Millions of Russians found themselves gripped by a tyranny incomparably worse than that of the Czar.

III. As to my having desired to obtain the crown otherwise than by obedience to my father, and following him in regular order of succession, all the world may easily understand the reason; for, when I was once out of the right way, and resolved to imitate my father in nothing, I naturally sought to obtain the succession by any, even the most wrongful method. I confess that I was even willing to come into possession of it by foreign assistance, if it had been necessary. If the emperor had been ready to fulfill the promise that he made me of procuring for me the crown of Russia, even with an armed force, I should have spared nothing to have obtained it. "For instance, if the emperor had demanded that I should afterward furnish him with Russian troops against any of his enemies, in exchange for his service in aiding me, or large sums of money, I should have done whatever he pleased. I would have given great presents to his ministers and generals over and above. In a word, I would have thought nothing too much to have obtained my desire." This confession, after it was brought to the Czar by Tolstoi, to whom Alexis gave it, was sent by him to the great council of state, to aid them in forming their opinion. The council were occupied for the space of a week in hearing the case, and then they drew up and signed their decision. The statement which they made began by acknowledging

[T]he Constitution was built for deliberation, not for speed. The Founding Fathers sought to create a system of checks and balances that prevents any branch of government from becoming tyrannical. The rise of czars threatens that goal. Hopefully, the political problems the czars caused President Obama mean that the American czar system will share the fate of the Russian one.

In just a bony fistful of years, classical Russian food culture vanished, almost without a trace. The country's nationalistic euphoria on entering World War I in 1914 collapsed under nonstop disasters presided over by the 'last of the Romanovs': clueless, autocratic czar Nicholas II and Alexandra, his reactionary, hysterical German-born wife. Imperial Russia went lurching toward breakdown and starvation. Golden pies, suckling pigs? In 1917, the insurgent Bolsheviks' banners demanded simply the most basic of staples - khleb (bread) - along with land (beleaguered peasants were 80 percent of Russia's population) and an end to the ruinous war. On the evening of October 25, hours before the coup by Lenin and his tiny cadre, ministers of Kerensky's foundering provisional government, which replaced the czar after the popular revolution of February 1917, dined finely at the Winter Palace: soup, artichokes, and fish. A doomed meal all around.

I had just read a new book, published in early 1989, by the eminent historian Natan Eydelman, Revolution from the Top in Russia. The author regards perestroika as just one more in a series of turning points in Russian history and reminds us that all such turning points, revolutions, convulsions, and breakthroughs in this country came about because they were the will of the czar, the will of the secretary-general, or the will of the Kremlin (or of Petersburg). The energy of the Russian nation, says Eydelman, has always been spent not on independent grass-roots initiatives, but on carrying out the will of the ruling elite.

That is why totalitarian regimes, secular and religious, inevitably are antisemitic. Totalitarian regimes by definition aim to control the totality of their citizens’ lives and can therefore tolerate no uncontrolled religious or national expressions, both of which are part of Judaism. Once the Jewish roots of antisemitism are recognized, the only solutions to the “Jewish Problem,” as far as antisemites are concerned, are obvious. The Jews must either convert, be expelled, or murdered. In the 1880s, the Russian czar’s procurator of the Holy Synod and architect of Russian government policy at the time, Constantine Pobedonostev, is said to have offered precisely this advice: One-third of the Jews living in the Russian Empire should be converted to Christianity, one-third should be expelled, and one-third should be put to death.9 In fact, for the last two thousand years, this has repeatedly been the chronological order of antisemitic acts.

At the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) he did his spying in other ways: He would blurt out what seemed to be a secret (actually something he had made up), then watch his listeners’ reactions. He might tell a gathering of diplomats, for instance, that a reliable source had revealed to him that the czar of Russia was planning to arrest his top general for treason. By watching the diplomats’ reactions to this made-up story, he would know which ones were most excited by the weakening of the Russian army—perhaps their governments had designs on Russia? As Baron von Stetten said, “Monsieur Talleyrand fires a pistol into the air to see who will jump out the window.

Read the book, Shadow over the Winter Palace,” Sam Hugh explained. “It’s about the Russian Czar Nicholas II and his crazy wife.” Of course, Santos

Will you get fat?" the king blurted out at Luce,eyeing her corset-squeezed waist. "I like the way she looks now," he said to the duke. "But I don't want her to get fat." Had she been in her own body, Luce might have told the king exactly what she thought of his unappealing physique. But Lys had perfect composure, and Luce felt herself reply, "I should hope to always please the king,with my looks and with my temperament." "Yes,of course," the duke purred, walking a tight circle around Luce. "I'm sure His Majesty could keep the princess on the diet of his choice." "What about hunting?" the king asked. "Your Majesty," the duke began to say, "that isn't befitting a queen. You have plenty of other hunting companions. I,for one-" "My father is an excellent hunter," Luce said. Her brain was whirling, working toward something-anything-that might help her escape this scene. "Should I bed down with your father, then?" the king sneered. "Knowing Your Majesty likes guns," Luce said, straining to keep her tone polite, "I have brought you a gift-my father's most prized hunting rifle. He'd asked me to bring it to you this evening,but I wasn't sure when I'd have the pleasure of making your acquaintance." She had the king's full attention. He was perched on the edge of this throne. "What's it look like? Are there jewels in its butt?" "The...the stock is hand-carved from cherrywood," she said,feeding the king the details Bill called out from where he stood beside the king's chair. "The bore was milled by-by-" "Oh,what would sound impressive? By a Russian metalworker who has since gone to work for the czar." Bill leaned over the king's pastries and sniffed hungrily. "These look good.

She (Empress Marie Feodorovna) instinctively understood that to the Russian people the appearance of greatness was as important as greatness itself.

There’s more in it than that,” Ludwik broke in. “We’ve got to admit that the Bolsheviks have raised the nation considerably. Russia under the czars was comparable to the Middle Ages; its slavery had no equal in Europe. The ignorance of the masses, the illiteracy, the clerical witchcraft, subordinated to the demands of the czarist regime, were terrible. Conditions today are far better than they were before the Revolution. Illiteracy is being fought with good results, and people are becoming a little more civilized. Slavery of masses of peasants under one landlord no longer exists. The industrialization, the development of communication, motorization, and education are all worthy of admiration. “On the other hand, communism has bred a new prototype of a Russian slave, the slave of the party, of a regime without scruples. The iron police system of NKVD is a thousand times more terrible than the Okhrana (the czarist police). The NKVD holds in its power the life and death of every individual in Russia. Without giving reasons, it sends men and women to prisons and forced-labor camps in the most damned and godforsaken places in the world, where they spend ten to twenty years rotting to death, often not knowing the nature of the crime for which they are being punished. On the rare occasions when a man is freed after ten years of torture, he is informed briefly that his arrest was a mistake. “If now, faced by war, the people are

North suspected that even the Russian Czar was paying far less than Uncle Sam.