Russian Strength Quotes

When he finished, he drank from the cup. Everyone else did too, so I followed suit. And nearly choked to death. It was like fire in liquid form. It took every ounce of strength I had to swallow it and not spray it on those around me. "Wh...what is this?" I asked, coughing. Viktoria grinned. "Vodka." I peered at the glass. "No, it isn't. I've had vodka before." "Not Russian vodka." Apparently not.

You must control your emotions. You must control your feelings. If there is any fear or insecurity, you must destroy it before it destroys you. It is not the size or the strength of your opponent that matters. These can be measured. It is what cannot be measured...courage, determination...that count.

As far as segregationists were concerned, racial integration and communism were one and the same and posed the same kind of threat to traditional American values. Yet those charged with mounting the American offence in space saw strength in countering the Russian values of secrecy with its opposites - transparency, democracy, equality- and not a simulacrum.

Some say God is living there [in space]. I was looking around very attentively, but I did not see anyone there. I did not detect either angels or gods....I don't believe in God. I believe in man - his strength, his possibilities, his reason.

There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time. All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth. All the others have stopped, or continue to advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path to which no limit can be perceived. The American struggles against the obstacles which nature opposes to him; the adversaries of the Russian are men. The former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms. The conquests of the American are therefore gained with the ploughshare; those of the Russian by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of the people; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm. The principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

In the last days before the attack a strange feeling, not so much of confidence as of fatalism, pervaded the German tank forces- if this strength, this enormous agglomeration that surrounded them on every side, could not break the Russians, then nothing would.

The yard consisted of grass and a Russian Olive tree, which was about the only kind of tree able to survive on the high prairies. Its thin, grey leaves made it look as though it were on the verge of dying, thereby fooling the elements and the bad weather into thinking that they didn't have to bother with something so spindly and bent, something so obviously on its last legs.

It was drizzling. As people rushed along, they began opening umbrellas over their heads, and all at once the streets were crowded, too. Arched umbrella roofs collided with one another. The men were courteous, and when passing Tereza they held their umbrellas high over their heads and gave her room to go by. But the women would not yield; each looked straight ahead, waiting for the other woman to acknowledge her inferiority and step aside. The meeting of the umbrellas was a test of strength. At first Tereza gave way, but when she realized her courtesy was not being reciprocated, she started clutching her umbrella like the other women and ramming it forcefully against the oncoming umbrellas. No one ever said "Sorry." For the most part no one said anything, though once or twice she did hear a "Fat cow!" or "Fuck you!" The women thus armed with umbrellas were both young and old, but the younger among them proved the more steeled warriors. Tereza recalled the days of the invasion and the girls in miniskirts carrying flags on long staffs. Theirs was a sexual vengeance: the Russian soldiers had been kept in enforced celibacy for several long years and must have felt they had landed on a planet invented by a science fiction writer, a planet of stunning women who paraded their scorn on beautiful long legs the likes of which had not been seen in Russia for the past five or six centuries. She had taken many pictures of those young women against a backdrop of tanks. How she had admired them! And now these same women were bumping into her, meanly and spitefully. Instead of flags, they held umbrellas, but they held them with the same pride. They were ready to fight as obstinately against a foreign army as against an umbrella that refused to move out of their way.

It   is important it is to have someone understand and trust you. Faith  and  trust  –  how  powerful  they  can  be!  When  no  one  believes  in  you,   your soul dries up, your strength is exhausted and you are transformed into a bird with crippled wings. But when people put their faith in you, then even things you would never dream about become possible.

No fucking way. There’s no way you could ever be a weakness, Solnyshka. You’re my greatest strength. ~ Malice to Willow

When writers seek to get to the heart of the bear they often use Winston Churchill’s famous observation of Russia, made in 1939: ‘It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’, but few go on to complete the sentence, which ends, ‘but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.’ Seven years later he used that key to unlock his version of the answer to the riddle, asserting, ‘I am convinced that there is nothing they admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.

Russians are easy to spot, even if you dress them like Buckingham Palace guards. They are “the white people who look seriously ticked off,” as Army Ranger vet Ellis Jones, RKC, has put it on our forum.

The Russian reader in old cultured Russia was certainly proud of Pushkin and of Gogol, but he was just as proud of Shakespeare or Dante, of Baudelaire or of Edgar Allan Poe, of Flaubert or of Homer, and this was the Russian reader's strength. I have a certain personal interest in the question, for if my fathers had not been good readers, I would hardly be here today, speaking of these matters in this tongue.

It was not the great technocrats of Koenigsberg or Moscow who supplied the casualties in the siege of Stalingrad: it was superstitious Bavarian peasants and low-grade Russian agricultural workers. The effect of modern war is to eliminate retrogressive types, while sparing the technocracy and increasing its hold upon public affairs. In the new age, what has hitherto been merely the intellectual nucleus of the race is to become, by gradual stages, the race itself.

Кто уцелел — умрёт, кто мёртв — воспрянет. И вот потомки, вспомнив старину: — Где были вы? — Вопрос как громом грянет, Ответ как громом грянет: — На Дону! — Что делали? — Да принимали муки, Потом устали и легли на сон. И в словаре задумчивые внуки За словом: «долг» напишут слово: «Дон». 30 марта 1918 Those spared - will die, those fallen - rise from under. Then come the sons, remembering days far gone: - And where were you? - the words will roll like thunder, The answer roll like thunder: - On the Don! - What did you do? - We bore with grief and cruelty, Then laid us down to sleep, our last strength gone. And in the dictionary, over Duty, The grandsons, looking back, will write: the Don.

In the eclectic Gennadius one finds all these motivations: 'A worm is very humble and base, and you are glorious and proud; but if you are sensible, you yourself should humiliate your pride by meditating: my strength and my force become a shelter for worms.

People often tell me that I am a pessimist, that I don't believe in the strength of the Russian people, that I am obsessive in my opposition to Putin and see nothing beyond that. If anybody thinks they can take comfort in the "optimistic" forecast, let them do so. It is certainly the easier way, but it is a death sentence for our grandchildren.

A famous expression goes, “The less people know about how sausages and laws are made, the better they sleep at night.” Our human rights campaign made strange bedfellows with Montana beef farmers, Russian human rights activists, and Boeing airplane salesmen, but by working together it appeared as if we had the strength to overpower any remaining resistance to getting the law passed.

What the complacent Russians forgot was that their strengths – above all, their technological superiority – were not a permanent monopoly conferred by Providence on people with white skin. There was in fact nothing biological to prevent Asians from adopting Western forms of economic and political organization, nor from replicating Western inventions. The first Asian country to work out how to do so was Japan.

Being depressed is not the worst thing. It depends on how you address the feeling. Perhaps Sergei is luckier than his crewmates. Americans always desire happiness, so they fear sadness, unlike Russians, who can draw strength from mourning. The Japanese too, Sergei understands, have an easier relationship with melancholy. Sergei is very glad that Helen is a woman and not a man. Depressed American men on spaceships are embarrassing.

Lenin is one of those people who possess a quite exceptional strength of character . . . he is a man of many gifts and he has all the qualities of a “leader” – especially the complete lack of morality essential for such a role, and the aristocrat’s contempt for the masses. Life in all its complexity is unknown to Lenin. He does not know the masses. He has never lived among them, but he found out from books how to raise the masses onto their hind legs, how to enrage their instincts easily. To Lenin, the working class is like iron ore to a metalworker. Is it possible, given present circumstances, to cast a socialist state out of this ore? Evidently not. But why not try? What does Lenin risk if his experiment fails? . . . I am mistrustful of Russians in power – recently slaves themselves, they will become unbridled despots as soon as they have the chance to be their neighbours’ masters.

We, the workers and inhabitants of St Petersburg, of various estates, our wives, our children, and our aged, helpless parents, come to THEE, O SIRE to seek justice and protection. We are impoverished; we are oppressed, overburdened with excessive toil, contemptuously treated . . . We are suffocating in despotism and lawlessness. O SIRE we have no strength left, and our endurance is at an end. We have reached that frightful moment when death is better than the prolongation of our unbearable sufferings. . .

I guess part of me hoped that you'd come to me because you trusted me to help. And because maybe you missed me, just a little." Beka took a deep breath. "Just a little? Hell, Marcus, it felt like I was missing half my soul."... His hazel eyes stared into hers, as if he could read her mind, or maybe her heart, which stuttered and skipped as if it only half remembered how to beat. Then he said in a low, fervent voice, "I think I found it for you." He pulled her into his arms, wrapping her in strength and warmth and longing, tugging her in close until his lips met hers.

The Russian armies drove forward in the same desperate fashion in which they had retreated in the previous year, numbed by daily horrors. Victory at Kursk meant little to a soldier such as Private Ivanov of the 70th Army, who wrote despairingly to his family in Irkutsk: “Death, and only death awaits me. Death is everywhere here. I shall never see you again because death, terrible, ruthless and merciless is going to cut short my young life. Where shall I find strength and courage to live through all this? We are all terribly dirty, with long hair and beards, in rags. Farewell for ever.” Private Samokhvalov was in equally wretched condition: “Papa and Mama, I will describe to you my situation, which is bad. I am concussed. Very many of my unit have been killed—the senior lieutenant, the regimental commander, most of my comrades; now it must be my turn. Mama, I have not known such fear in all my eighteen years. Mama, please pray to God that I live. Mama, I read your prayer … I must admit frankly that at home I did not believe in God, but now I think of him forty times a day. I don’t know where to hide my head as I write this. Papa and Mama, farewell, I will never see you again, farewell, farewell, farewell.

There will be thunder then. Remember me. Say "She asked for storms." The entire world will turn the colour of crimson stone, and your heart, as then, will turn to fire. That day, in Moscow, a true prophecy, when for the last time I say goodbye, soaring to the heavens that I longed to see, leaving mI haven't locked the door, Nor lit the candles, You don't know, don't care, That tired I haven't the strength To decide to go to bed. Seeing the fields fade in The sunset murk of pine-needles, And to know all is lost, That life is a cursed hell: I've got drunk On your voice in the doorway. I was sure you'd come back.

Academician Amosov’s ‘1000 Moves’ Morning ‘Recharge’ Complex 1. Squat –100 repetitions 2. Side bends –100 repetitions 3. Pushups on the floor –50 repetitions 4. Forward bends –100 repetitions 5. Straight arm lateral raises overhead –100 repetitions 6. Torso turns –50 repetitions 7. Roman chair situps –100 repetitions 8. One legged jumps in place –100 repetitions per leg 9. Bringing the elbows back –100 repetitions 10. ‘The birch tree’ –hold for the count of 100 11. Leg and hip raises. Lie on your back and bring your feet behind your head while keeping your legs reasonably straight. –100 repetitions 12. Sucking in the stomach –50 repetitions

To celebrate the Russian/Ukrainian partnership, in 1954 the 300th anniversary of the Pereiaslav Treaty was marked throughout the Soviet Union in an unusually grandiose manner. In addition to numerous festivities, myriad publications, and countless speeches, the Central Committee of the all-union party even issued thirteen "thesis", which argued the irreversibility of the "everlasting union" of the Ukrainians and the Russians: "The experience of history has shown that the way of fraternal union and alliance chosen by the Russians and Ukrainians was the only true way. The union of two great Slavic peoples multiplied their strength in the common struggle against all external foes, against serf owners and the bourgeoisie, again tsarism and capitalist slavery. The unshakeable friendship of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples has grown and strengthened in this struggle." To emphasize the point that the union with Moscow brought the Ukrainians great benefits, the Pereiaslav anniversary was crowned by the Russian republic's ceding of Crimea to Ukraine "as a token of friendship of the Russian people." But the "gift" of the Crimea was far less altruistic than it seemed. First, because the peninsula was the historic homeland of the Crimean Tatars whom Stalin had expelled during the Second World War, the Russians did not have the moral right to give it away nor did the Ukrainians have the right to accept it. Second, because of its proximity and economic dependence on Ukraine, the Crimea's links with Ukraine were naturally greater than with Russia. Finally, the annexation of the Crimea saddled Ukraine with economic and political problems. The deportation of the Tatars in 1944 had created economic chaos in the region and it was Kiev's budget that had to make up loses. More important was the fact that, according to the 1959 census, about 860,000 Russians and only 260,000 Ukrainians lived in the Crimea. Although Kiev attempted to bring more Ukrainians into the region after 1954, the Russians, many of whom were especially adamant in rejecting any form of Ukrainization, remained the overwhelming majority. As a result, the Crimean "gift" increased considerably the number of Russians in the Ukrainian republic. In this regard, it certainly was an appropriate way of marking the Pereiaslav Treaty.

America sucks at information warfare, absolutely sucks. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Democracies are marketplaces of ideas. We stand for freedom, liberty, human rights, and peaceful protest, so stopping one thing, like the violent views of terrorists or nefarious Russian influence of homegrown Americans, gets quite tricky. American values and those of other Western democracies are their greatest strength when shared and promoted—and a major vulnerability in the eyes of those who seek to exploit them. Suppressing ideas undermines American values. And so countering bad ideas, like those that fuel terrorism or authoritarianism, proves vexing, as we tend to believe that the remedy to be applied is more speech, even though we are not entirely sure what to say, how to say it, or who should say it.

In Moscow I asked how these things were achieved. I was told that the whole theory of the Communist state was opposed to the separation of peoples on religious or racial grounds, and that workers had no strength divided up into warring camps. I was told the Soviet schools taught that all men are equal. I said, "The theory of our American democracy is that all men are equal, too--except that where I live it does not seem to work out that way. Theories are all right--but how do you make them work in Russia?" "Here we have laws against racial intolerance," they said. I said, "We have such laws in some of our American cities, too, but often the laws do not work." The Russians said, "In the Soviet Union, we make them work. Here nobody dares insult or spit on or hurt a Jew simply because he is a Jew any more.

The great self-limitation practiced by man for ten centuries yielded, between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, the whole flower of the so-called "Renaissance." The root, usually, does not resemble the fruit in appearance, but there is an undeniable connection between the root's strength and juiciness and the beauty and taste of the fruit. The Middle Ages, it seems, have nothing in common with the Renaissance and are opposite to it in every way; nonetheless, all the abundance and ebullience of human energies during the Renaissance were based not at all on the supposedly "renascent" classical world, nor on the imitated Plato and Virgil, nor on manuscripts torn from the basements of old monasteries, but precisely on those monasteries, on those stern Franciscians and cruel Dominicans, on Saints Bonaventure, Anselm of Canterbury, and Bernard of Clairvaux. The Middle Ages were a great repository of human energies: in the medieval man's asceticism, self-abnegation, and contempt for his own beauty, his own energies, and his own mind, these energies, this heart, and this mind were stored up until the right time. The Renaissance was the epoch of the discovery of this trove: the thin layer of soil covering it was suddenly thrown aside, and to the amazement of following centuries dazzling, incalculable treasures glittered there; yesterday's pauper and wretched beggar, who only knew how to stand on crossroads and bellow psalms in an inharmonious voice, suddenly started to bloom with poetry, strength, beauty, and intelligence. Whence came all this? From the ancient world, which had exhausted its vital powers? From moldy parchments? But did Plato really write his dialogues with the same keen enjoyment with which Marsilio Ficino annotated them? And did the Romans, when reading the Greeks, really experience the same emotions as Petrarch, when, for ignorance of Greek, he could only move his precious manuscripts from place to place, kiss them now and then, and gaze sadly at their incomprehensible text? All these manuscripts, in convenient and accurate editions, lie before us too: why don't they lead us to a "renascence" among us? Why didn't the Greeks bring about a "renascence" in Rome? And why didn't Greco-Roman literature produce anything similar to the Italian Renaissance in Gaul and Africa from the second to the fourth century? The secret of the Renaissance of the fourteenth-fifteenth centuries does not lie in ancient literature: this literature was only the spade that threw the soil off the treasures buried underneath; the secret lies in the treasures themselves; in the fact that between the fourth and fourteenth centuries, under the influence of the strict ascetic ideal of mortifying the flesh and restraining the impulses of his spirit, man only stored up his energies and expended nothing. During this great thousand-year silence his soul matured for The Divine Comedy; during this forced closing of eyes to the world - an interesting, albeit sinful world-Galileo was maturing, Copernicus, and the school of careful experimentation founded by Bacon; during the struggle with the Moors the talents of Velasquez and Murillo were forged; and in the prayers of the thousand years leading up to the sixteenth century the Madonna images of that century were drawn, images to which we are able to pray but which no one is able to imitate. ("On Symbolists And Decadents")

After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an American critic suggested that "Lolita" was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution "English language" for "romantic novel" would make this elegant formula more correct. But here I feel my voice rising to a much too strident pitch. None of my American friends have read my Russian books and thus every appraisal on the strength of my English ones is bound to be out of focus. My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses -- the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions -- which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.

Before us is mighty, so to speak, transformative and preparatory work. From a period which is creative, immediate and elemental, we must proceed to a period which is critical, conscious and cultural. These are the two worlds between which exists the entire abyss. The contemporary generation has the misfortune of being born between these two worlds, before this abyss. Herein is explained its frailty, diseased anxiety, hungry search for new ideals and a certain fateful impotency in all of its efforts. The best youth and vigor of talent is not expended on vital creativity but on an internal destructiveness and struggle with the past, on the passage across the abyss to that land, to that shore, to the frontiers of a free and divine idealism. How many people are perishing in this passage or are losing their strength irrevocably!... ("On The Reasons For The Decline And On The New Tendencies In Contemporary Literature")

Discussing the Russian campaign two years later, Napoleon admitted ‘that when [I] got to Moscow, [I] considered the business as done’.24 He claimed he could have stayed in the well-stocked city throughout the winter had it not been for the burning of Moscow, ‘an event on which I could not calculate, as there is not, I believe, a precedent for it in the history of the world. But by God, one has to admit that showed a hell of a strength of character.’25 Although the part of the city that survived the fire was large enough for winter cantonments, and some supplies were found there in private cellars, it was not remotely capable of wintering an army of over 100,000 men for half a year. There was not enough fodder for the horses, campfires had to be built of mahogany furniture and gilded window-frames, and the army was soon subsisting off rotten horseflesh.26 In retrospect it would have been better for the French had the whole city been razed to the ground, as that would have forced an immediate retreat.

Until the Tower of Babel, humans had only planted and sown, reaped and harvested. Farmers are dependent upon nature and, in their dependency, turn to God. Builders, however, seek to control nature. And in their sense of might they tend to overplay their own role and at times to believe that they are no longer dependent on God. “Come let us build a city and a tower with its top in Heaven” (Genesis 11:4). The Talmud adds (Sanhedrin 109a): “We will build a tower that reaches so high that we will be able to come to the very throne of the Almighty and topple him.” The metaphor is profound. The scientist says if we build high enough, if we indicate our ultimate strength, if we reach the skies and soar to the very Heavens, then we, too, with Yuri Gagarin, the first Russian cosmonaut, can say with unbounded egoism, “There is no God, because I was in the Heavens and I did not see Him.” “Let us make us a name” was the cry of the first technological wizards. “We will dethrone God.” And so they built the Tower of Babel.

Серафимы I Резнею кровавой на время насытясь, Устали и слуги, и доблестный витязь И входят под своды обители Божьей, Где теплятся свечи Господних подножий. И с кроткой улыбкой со стен базилики Глядят серафимов блаженные лики. II Палач утомленный уснул на мгновенье. Подвешенной жертвы растет исступленье. На дыбе трепещет избитое тело, Медлительным пыткам не видно предела. А там, над землею, над тьмою кромешной, Парят серафимы с улыбкой безгрешной. III В глубоком «in pace», без воли и силы, Монахиня бьется о камни могилы. В холодную яму, где крысы и плесень, Доносится отзвук божественных песен. То – с гулом органа, в куреньях незримы, «Осанна! Осанна!» поют серафимы. The Seraphim I Gorged for a time with bloody slaughter, both servants and valorous hero are weary and enter the dome of God's dwelling, where candles glimmer at the Master's feet, and from the basilica's walls, with gentle smiles, gaze the blissful faces of the Seraphim. II The weary executioner has dozed for an instant. The hung victim's frenzy grows. A beaten body quivers on the rack, no limit to these slow tortures is seen. But there, above the earth, above this pitch darkness, soar the Seraphim with innocent smiles. III With deep "in pace" lacking strength and will, a nun beats against the stones of a grave. The echo of heavenly songs is heard in that cold pit, with rats and mould. But beyond - with the organ's roar, unseen in clouds of incense, "Hosanna, Hosanna!" sing the Seraphim.

The difficulty with women in film and literature is similar to the cultural minority, in that they are often a plot device rather than a character unto themselves. For example, even a strong woman may appear alongside a man in a story, but she ultimately is part of the hero's overall goal; something to be won, or an element of his proving himself is winning her affections, or being captured or killed in order to send the hero into overdrive to complete his mission. In a story where she is the main protagonist, she often has to shed her femininity in order to complete the task. The fact that they are women overtakes from their serving the story as a character, rather than an object. Cultural minorities often appear to portray a view of their culture; the Russian will be a Russian and do Russian things. The woman will be contrary, or compensate for her womanhood by being overtly tough and masculine, or sexy and seductive therefore manipulative and ultimately something for the hero to either deny or conquer. A great example of the culture stigma NOT being exploited is in Wentworth: Doreen is an aboriginal, we see that, but being an aboriginal doesn't play as a device. It's a part of her, not the overruling definition of her, and while issues pop up regarding the fact, they are not at the forefront of the character. Women, it seems, are even more ingrained in our minds as elements or objects which only appear in order to have a titillating effect on the audience, or to serve another character's journey as either a challenge or a hindrance. What we want is to see women in stories who's sex is noted, drawn strength from without compromise thereon, but not of consequence to other characters or the evolution of the story.

Then he went up to the window. His heart began pounding excitedly when he turned back the yellow linen of the curtain. An enchantingly beautiful spectacle was revealed before him — although today he immediately noticed that there was something strange in the entire aspect of this extensive and excellently arranged Garden. Precisely what amazed him he was still unable to say right away, and he began to examine the Garden attentively. What was there so unpleasant in its beauty? Why was the Youth's heart trembling so painfully? Was it that everything in the enchanted Garden was too exact. All the paths were laid out geometrically, and all were of the same width, and all were covered with precisely the same amount of yellow sand; the plants were all arranged with exaggerated orderliness; the trees were trimmed in the form of spheres, cones and cylinders; the flowers were arranged according to the various shades so that their composition was pleasing to the eye, but for some reason or other this wounded the soul. But giving it careful thought, what was there unpleasant in that orderliness which merely bore witness to the careful attention which someone paid to the Garden? Of course there was no reason for this to cause the strange apprehension which oppressed the Youth. But it was in something else as yet incomprehensible to the Youth. One thing was for certain, though, that this Garden did not resemble any other garden which the Youth had happened to see in his time. Here he saw giant flowers of an almost too brilliant color — at times it seemed that many-colored fires were burning in the midst of the luxuriant greenery — brown and black stalks of creeping growths, thick like tropical serpents; leaves of a strange shape and immeasurable size, whose greeness seemed to be unnaturally brilliant. Heady and languid fragrances wafted through the window in gentle waves, breaths of vanilla, frankincense and bitter almond, sweet and bitter, ecstatic and sad, like some joyous funereal mysterium. The Youth felt the tender yet lively touches of the gentle wind. But in the Garden it seemed as if the wind had no strength and lay exhausted on the tranquil green grass and in the shadows beneath the bushes of the strange growths. And because the trees and grass of the strange Garden were breathlessly quiet and could not hear the softly blowing wind above them and did not reply to it, they seemed to be inanimate. And thus they were deceitful, evil and hostile to man. ("The Poison Garden")

Yet, in spite of such pervasive, even relentless injustice, the best Russians I know display a remarkable inner strength and a commitment to living with as much dignity as they can.

By 2006, they had created an international exemplar of interconnectedness. Estonian software engineers had not only created Skype; they were helping to build a new society, where the only rituals requiring you to show up in person and present a document were marriage, divorce, and buying property. Everything else was online—government, banking, finance, insurance, communications, broadcast and print media, the balloting for elections. Wi-Fi was strong, ever present, and free. People began to call their homeland e-Estonia. They had created the first country whose political and social architectures were framed by an internet infrastructure—and perhaps the most technologically sophisticated nation on earth. In April 2007, the authorities in Tallinn decided to move the Bronze Soldier from its pedestal to a military cemetery. Estonian patriots found it offensive, Russian nationalists came to Estonia to rally around it, and the statue became a flash point of confrontation. Russia’s foreign affairs minister, Sergey Lavrov, called the decision disgusting; he warned of serious consequences for Estonia. An angry mob of Russians ran riot in the capital. In Moscow, young thugs laid siege to the Estonian embassy and forced it to shut down. And then Putin waged political warfare in a way that made Estonia’s strength its weakness.

The purity of cinema, its inherent strength, is revealed not in the symbolic aptness of images (however bold these may be) but in the capacity of those images to express a specific, unique, actual fact.

This is the secret of our strength and national vitality,” he went on. Significantly, DeBow spoke of Southerners as a “nationality.” Nations were ruined by a diversity of interests pulling them apart, he said, and in the case of the North by too much immigration from inferior north European peoples such as Poles, Russians, shanty Irish, and especially Germans, who instead of assimilating into the population and being elevated by it, rather remained apart in their own ethnic communities and thus dragged down the whole.21Somehow, he failed to grasp that by his own logic the African root stock of Southern slaves would be superior to the whites’ balmier Mediterranean origins.

Their differences were evident in the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, which Germany knew very well how to exploit to recover its economic and geopolitical strength in a relatively short period of time. France wanted to teach Germany a lesson, prevent its economic recovery and eradicate any pretensions of future political or military domination at all costs. The United States and Britain, on the other hand, considered that Germany should retain sufficient, though modest, strength to continue acting as a buffer against the Russian, now Soviet, threat, at the same time preventing any future dictatorial, warlike or expansionist drift. Faithful to their democratic liberal traditions, those two countries considered that the best antidote against such radical tendencies was to support the implementation of liberal democracy in Germany and to re-educate the German people in the values of Western civilisation.

seemed to have any. Germany, according to Erzberger, was to utilize victory to gain control of the European continent for “all time.” All demands at the peace table were to be based on this premise for which three conditions were necessary: abolition of neutral states at Germany’s borders, the end of England’s “intolerable hegemony” in world affairs, and the breaking up of the Russian colossus. Erzberger envisioned a Confederation of European States analogous to the later Mandates system under the League of Nations. Some states would be under German “guidance”; others, such as Poland and the Baltic group annexed from Russia, would be under German sovereignty for “all time,” with possible representation but no voting power in the Reichstag. Erzberger was not sure which category Belgium would fit into, but in either case Germany was to retain military control over the entire country and over the French coast from Dunkirk down to and including Boulogne and Calais. Germany would also acquire the Briey-Longwy iron basin and Belfort in Upper Alsace which she had failed to take in 1870. She would also take the French and Belgian colonies in Africa. Morocco, curiously enough, was excepted as likely to be too much of a drain on Germany’s strength. No mention was made of England’s colonies, which suggests that Erzberger may have been considering a negotiated settlement with England. In reparations the vanquished nations were to pay at least 10 billion marks for direct war costs, plus enough more to provide veterans’ funds, public housing, gifts to generals and statesmen, and pay off Germany’s entire national debt, thus obviating taxes on the German people for years to come.

Ripped calluses are manly, but since they make you lose training time, try to avoid them when you do your quick lifts. It is elementary, Watson—you must gradually build up the volume of swings, cleans, and snatches to let your skin adapt. You may want to sandpaper your kettlebell’s handles, as kettlebell sport competitors do. Remove the paint and smooth out the iron. Unlike presses and other grind lifts, swings, cleans, and snatches call for a loose grip. “Hook” the handle with your fingers rather than gripping it. Try to lift in a way that minimally stretches the skin on your palm. Figure it out. Load the calluses at the bases of your fingers as little as possible; let the kettlebell handle glide from the “hook” of the fingers to the heel of the palm and back in a manner that does not pinch the skin at the bases of the fingers. Do not let the calluses get thick and rough. Russian gireviks soak their hands in hot water at night, then thin out and smooth out their calluses with a pumice stone, and finally apply an oily cream or a three-to-one mix of glycerin and ammonia. I hang my head in shame to be giving you metrosexual skin-care advice. Speaks Brett Jones, Senior RKC, who gives his hands the double abuse of kettlebell lifting and extreme gripping feats: “Go out and get Cornhuskers Lotion and use it several times a day. This lotion is unique in that it is not greasy and actually toughens and conditions your skin. At night you may want to use a product that penetrates and moisturizes in a different way. Bag Balm and other heavy (oily) lotions can be used at night and can best be absorbed if you put them on before bed and wear mittens, socks or specially designed gloves available at some health and beauty stores. [Brett, I will take your word for it.]

Called girya in Russian, this cannonball with a handle has been making better men and women for over 300 years. In imperial Russia, “kettlebell” was synonymous with “strength.” A strongman or weightlifter was called a girevik or a “kettlebell man.” Strong ladies were girevichkas or “kettlebell women.

Not a single sport develops our muscular strength and bodies as well as kettlebell athletics,” reported Russian magazine Hercules in 1913.

Repeat the one arm snatch in 3-5 sets, first with the left (if it is the weaker one), and then for the same number of sets with the right arm. For some sessions, perform the complete cycle of the exercise by switching the kettlebell from hand to hand. Pay a lot of attention to developing your wrist strength. Snatch more often with the weaker arm.

The Official Soviet Weightlifting Textbook Girevoy Sport Competition Training Guidelines (Falameyev, 1986) Train three times a week on non-consecutive days, preferably at the same time of the day. In the beginning limit your sessions to 30 min and your load to 3 sets per exercise in two arm exercises and 3 sets per arm in one arm drills. Select a weight that enables you to do 5-16 repetitions in a given exercise. Perform your exercises through the full range of motion. Breathe deep and smooth without excessive straining and breath holding. Rest for 2 min between sets. Calmly walk around. Train the one arm snatches, presses, and C&Js in 3-5 sets. Complete all the sets for the weaker arm first. Once a week work both arms back to back without setting the kettlebell down on the platform. Perform 2-3 such competition style sets. Do extra snatches with the weaker arm. Pay a lot of attention to the development of your wrist strength. Before tackling the competition-level, two arm/two kettlebell C&Js, master one arm/one KB C&Js, with a special emphasis on the weaker arm. Train the two arm/two kettlebell C&J in 6-8 sets. Include two different kettlebell exercises in a training session and follow them up with 2-3 barbell exercises. As the competition approaches, the number of barbell exercises in a session is decreased, so is their volume.

In elite athletic circles the word is spreading as in-the-know Americans are purchasing ancient Russian fitness equipment, resurrecting old exercise philosophies and obtaining significant gains in cardio conditioning, muscle tone and strength as a result. Call it the Slavic Retro Fitness Craze: kettlebells are rustic and raw and are lifted and swung and tossed in specified patterns to produce specific muscular and cardiovascular results. The apparatus has a system, a philosophy of usage, first formulated in Czarist Russia.

Kettlebells have been rediscovered by a new generation of modern athletes seeking ways to gain an edge over the competition. It’s at once both a puzzling and predictable reemergence. Kettlebells have pure Slavic origins and have been at the heart and soul of Russian sport-strength training for more than a century. Regular use of heavy kettlebells develops strength with staying power; call it sustained strength. This type strength makes itself available over an extended period of time.

Sustained strength is different from short-burst strength. Sustained strength is an athletic attribute particularly prized by wrestlers, boxers, mixed martial artists, football, basketball, hockey and lacrosse players. The common thread is participation in athletic events of long duration where last minute flurries make the difference between winning and losing, between 1st and 8th.

Sustained strength doesn’t just happen, it is nurtured and developed. Through the use of multiple sets conducted with little rest and often high repetitions using exercises with exaggerated range-of-motion, sustained strength is gradually built up, and over time improved and extended. The transition takes time and patience and lots of practice.

Another athletic attribute associated with the regular use of kettlebells is the acquisition of “in-between” strength. Powerlifters, bodybuilders and athletes who train using modern day iron-pumping tactics are tremendously strong within the technical confines and boundaries of the specific exercises they practice, but often brute strength need be administered from an odd angle, a quirky position, a less-than-optimal push or pull position. Kettlebells fill in the gaps and spaces that separate conventional exercises, one from another, and build elusive in-between strength.

The system straddles two worlds: strength training and cardiovascular training. The system is neither pure strength training nor pure cardiovascular training. Kettlebells stand astride the two worlds, splitting the difference, combining strength training and cardio training. Is this the best of both worlds – or the worst of both worlds? The object of weight training is to trigger muscular hypertrophy. The object of aerobics is to burn fat and increase cardio capacity.

It’s no secret that kettlebells were standard equipment for Eastern Bloc strength athletes and old time strongmen—they are excellent for swings, laterals, rowing and a variety of throwing-related movements.

Not a single sport develops our muscular strength and bodies as well as kettlebell athletics,” wrote Ludvig Chaplinskiy in the Russian magazine Hercules in 1913.

The kettlebell is one of the best grip and forearm developers in existence. It has been hailed by such grip greats as John Brookfield. Dr. Fred Hatfield, a powerlifting legend and strength training expert, once quipped, “The best grip exercises are always going to be pulling at heavy weights ballistically.” High-rep snatches forge steel trap fingers and painfully pump the forearms to new growth. Their action is similar to the ballistic repetitive loading of rock climbing.

The fat loss power of kettlebells is explained by the extremely high metabolic cost of throwing a weight around combined with the fat burning effect of the growth hormone stimulated by such exercise. The author of Manly Weight Loss, top strength coach Charles Poliquin, explains:

Perform your exercises in a circuit. Allow at least a few minutes of rest between the sets; do not rush if your focus is strength. Compress the rest periods to favor endurance, muscular and cardiovascular, over strength. Do not practice exercises which require great coordination, e.g. the bent press, if you choose brief rest periods.

Snatches, cleans and jerks can be performed for any number of repetitions, from one to hundreds. Leave all the sets of more than ten reps for the very end of the workout to avoid their negative effect on your presses. The exception is when your presses have become too easy and you have not saved up for a heavier kettlebell yet. Understand that performing strength drills on the background of pronounced fatigue is only marginally effective.