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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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")

As the years go by and I grow older, I feel compelled to record my experiences in wartime Germany. It is important that my children, grandchildren and future generations know about the difficult times we all endured and of the horrors that existed in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Due to my advanced age and present condition, I am aware of the urgency to document my memories. If I fail in this, I will fail those who follow me, for they will never know!” Adeline Perry This book had its origin many years ago when Adeline Perry tried to recount her experiences and found that she would become overcome by her emotions every time she tried. The horrors and trials that she had experienced, plus the responsibility of raising her two daughters proved to be overwhelming. It was not until the twilight of her life when her daughters gently persuaded her to try again so that future generations might hear and perhaps learn from her experiences. In fact a good portion of these manuscripts were written while she was in the care of Hospice and only now survive because of immense personal strength and devotion to her family and the desire that what had happened to her would never happen again. Her daughter, and my wife, Ursula can take a great deal of pride in the effort it took to make these manuscripts a reality. After Adeline’s passing I had the privilege to develop the book Suppressed I Rise. Staying true to her story I gave her the authorship of the first edition of this book, which adhered to, and did not exceed what she had left in her original manuscripts. This book which was printed in limited numbers became an instant success and deserved more exposure. Readers also felt that there were questions that went unanswered requiring a follow-up. How did Adeline justify going to Germany prior to World War II? What happened to her marriage to Richard and how did she resume her own life, as a single mother, when she returned to South Africa! With additional reflections by her daughters Brigitte Grigsby and Ursula Bracker, and travel to the areas discussed in Suppressed I Rise, I expanded the book to include the prewar years. I also corrected minor contradictions and factual discrepancies that were inadvertently caused by the passage of time. Talking to people in Germany I confirmed some of what had happened including the hanging of the Russian prisoner of war. The book has now become a powerful example of not only personal courage but also of human tragedy. It is a book that I am proud to have written and share in the concept that it was a story that had to be told.

Meanwhile the rain continued to beat sonorously down upon the wooden roof, and could be heard trickling into a water butt; nor for a single moment did the dogs cease to bark with all the strength of their lungs. One of them, throwing up its head, kept venting a howl of such energy and duration that the animal seemed to be howling for a handsome wager; while another, cutting in between the yelpings of the first animal, kept restlessly reiterating, like a postman's bell, the notes of a very young puppy. Finally, an old hound which appeared to be gifted with a peculiarly robust temperament kept supplying the part of contrabasso, so that his growls resembled the rumbling of a bass singer when a chorus is in full cry, and the tenors are rising on tiptoe in their efforts to compass a particularly high note, and the whole body of choristers are wagging their heads before approaching a climax, and this contrabasso alone is tucking his bearded chin into his collar, and sinking almost to a squatting posture on the floor, in order to produce a note which shall cause the windows to shiver and their panes to crack. Naturally,

It may well be that the Bolsheviks' greatest strength in 1917 was not strict party organization and discipline (which scarcely existed at this time) but rather the party's stance of intransigent radicalism on the extreme left of the political spectrum. While other socialist and liberal groups jostled for position in the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet, the Bolsheviks refused to be co-opted and denounced the politics of coalition and compromise. While other formerly radical politicians called for restraint and responsible, statesmanlike leadership, the Bolsheviks stayed out on the streets with the irresponsible and belligerent revolutionary crowd. As the 'dual power' structure disintegrated, discrediting the coalition parties represented in the Provisional Government and Petrograd Soviet leadership, only the Bolsheviks were in a position to benefit. Among the socialist parties, only the Bolsheviks had overcome Marxist scruples, caught the mood of the crowd, and declared their willingness to seize power in the name of the proletarian revolution.

At one time it was reported about the town that our little circle was a hotbed of nihilism, profligacy, and godlessness, and the rumour gained more and more strength.

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.

You were spying?” Davey said, astounded. “For the Russians? Why would you do that?” “Because I have the courage of my convictions, my boy,” Mackay said, his voice momentarily gaining strength. “There were those of us who believed we were doing the right thing in helping the Soviets, as they were then, to keep up with the West. We were helping to maintain the balance of power, helping to prevent the war that would destroy the planet.

Hard in training, easy in combat,” quipped great Russian military leader Alexander Suvorov.

These are stories from the past, but they are still echoing now, in the present. As I write this, Russian forces are using rape as a weapon of war against Ukrainian women; deported mothers are being separated from their children in the US; border walls are being built and fortified at an unprecedented rate across the globe (there are currently seventy-four in existence). But this much is clear: when walls are built, people will find a way over or under them; when families are separated, they do everything in their power to be reunited; and when women are victims, they find the courage to speak up, to band together, to survive.

Principles are the first thing dictators attack. Various “Putins” around the world are undermining principles in their societies through propaganda and repression so that people cannot stand up for what they believe in. And then, when the dictatorship gains strength and resources, it tries to export its lack of principles, creating gray zones devoid of values. Europe has had to face this many times. Now we are experiencing another defining moment. Russia is trying to convince nations that it is easy to compromise principles—that they can ignore international law and turn a blind eye to injustice if it will supposedly bring stability. This is Moscow's main message - Putin invites everyone to forget about their principles, to show no resolve, to give up Ukrainian land and people, and then, he says, Russian bombing will stop. But throughout history, every time such agreements have been made, the threat has returned even stronger. Today, we have a chance to win in Eastern Europe so that we don't have to fight on the northern or other eastern fronts—in the Baltic states and Poland, or in the south—in the Balkans, where it is easy to ignite a conflict, or in African countries, whose problems are much closer to European societies than it may seem. We have to stand up for international law and the values on which our societies are built. We must be decisive. People matter. The law matters. State borders and the right of every nation to determine its own future matters. And while we know that Putin is threatening leaders and countries who can help us force Russia to peace, we must not give in. I thank you for every package of defense assistance to Ukraine. Every weapon you have provided helps to defend normal life—the kind of life you live here in Iceland or in any of your other countries, a life that no longer exists in Russia, where basic human rights have been taken away. We are now in the third year of a full-scale war, and our soldiers on the front lines need fresh strength. That is why we are working to equip our brigades. This is an urgent need. We are already cooperating with others—France has helped to equip one brigade, and we have an agreement on another. We invite you to join us in creating brigades, Scandinavian brigades, and demonstrate your continued commitment to the defense of Europe. I am grateful to Denmark and other partners who invest in arms production in Ukraine. Artillery, shells, drones—everything that allows Ukraine to defend itself despite any logistical delays on the part of partners or changing political moods in world capitals. We see that Putin is increasing weapons production, and rogue regimes like Pyongyang are helping him with this. Next year, Putin intends to catch up with the EU in munitions production. We can only prevent this now (...). - Translated from Ukrainian

Freedom from resentment and the understanding of the nature of resentment—who knows how very much after all I am indebted to my long illness for these two things? The problem is not exactly simple: a man must have experienced both through his strength and through his weakness, If illness and weakness are to be charged with anything at all, it is with the fact that when they prevail, the very instinct of recovery, which is the instinct of defence and of war in man, becomes decayed. He knows not how to get rid of anything, how to come to terms with anything, and how to cast anything behind him. Everything wounds him. People and things draw importunately near, all experiences strike deep, memory is a gathering wound. To be ill is a sort of resentment in itself. Against this resentment the invalid has only one great remedy—I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism which is free from revolt, and with which the Russian soldier, to whom a campaign proves unbearable, ultimately lays himself down in the snow. To accept nothing more, to undertake nothing more, to absorb nothing more—to cease entirely from reacting.... The tremendous sagacity of this fatalism, which does not always imply merely the courage for death, but which in the most dangerous cases may actually constitute a self-preservative measure, amounts to a reduction of activity in the vital functions, the slackening down of which is like a sort of will to hibernate. A few steps farther in this direction we find the fakir, who will sleep for weeks in a tomb.... Owing to the fact that one would be used up too quickly if one reacted, one no longer reacts at all: this is the principle. And nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment. Mortification, morbid susceptibility, the inability to wreak revenge, the desire and thirst for revenge, the concoction of every sort of poison—this is surely the most injurious manner of reacting which could possibly be conceived by exhausted men. It involves a rapid wasting away of nervous energy, an abnormal increase of detrimental secretions, as, for instance, that of bile into the stomach. To the sick man resentment ought to be more strictly forbidden than anything else—it is his special danger: unfortunately, however, it is also his most natural propensity. This was fully grasped by that profound physiologist Buddha. His "religion," which it would be better to call a system of hygiene, in order to avoid confounding it with a creed so wretched as Christianity, depended for its effect upon the triumph over resentment: to make the soul free therefrom was considered the first step towards recovery. "Not through hostility is hostility put to flight; through friendship does hostility end": this stands at the beginning of Buddha's teaching—this is not a precept of morality, but of physiology. Resentment born of weakness is not more deleterious to anybody than it is to the weak man himself—conversely, in the case of that man whose nature is fundamentally a rich one, resentment is a superfluous feeling, a feeling to remain master of which is almost a proof of riches. Those of my readers who know the earnestness-with which my philosophy wages war against the feelings of revenge and rancour, even to the extent of attacking the doctrine of "free will" (my conflict with Christianity is only a particular instance of it), will understand why I wish to focus attention upon my own personal attitude and the certainty of my practical instincts precisely in this matter. In my moments of decadence I forbade myself the indulgence of the above feelings, because they were harmful; as soon as my life recovered enough riches and pride, however, I regarded them again as forbidden, but this time because they were beneath me.

The Germans had a family of three main battle tanks. The Mark IV, which received its first real combat test in May 1940, weighed twenty-seven tons, had somewhat less armor than the Sherman, about the same maximum road speed, and a tank gun comparable in weight of projectile and muzzle velocity to the 76-mm. American tank gun but superior to the short-barreled 75-mm. The Panther, Mark V, had proved itself during 1944 but still was subject to mechanical failures which were well recognized but which seemingly could not be corrected in the hasty German production schedules. This tank had a weight of fifty tons, a superiority in base armor of one-half to one inch over the Sherman, good mobility and flotation, greater speed, and a high-velocity gun superior even to the new American 76-mm. tank gun. The Tiger, Mark VI, had been developed as an answer to the heavy Russian tank but had encountered numerous production difficulties (it had over 26,000 parts) and never reached the field in the numbers Hitler desired. The original model weighed fifty-four tons, had thicker armor than the Panther, including heavy top armor as protection against air attack, was capable of a speed comparable to the Sherman, and mounted a high-velocity 88-mm. cannon. A still heavier Mark VI, the King Tiger, had an added two to four inches of armor plate. Few of this model ever reached the Ardennes, although it was commonly reported by American troops. Exact figures on German tank strength are not available, but it would appear that of the estimated 1,800 panzers in the Ardennes battle some 250 were Tigers and the balance was divided equally between the Mark IV and the Panther. Battle experience in France, which was confirmed in the Ardennes, gave the Sherman the edge over the Mark IV in frontal, flank, and rear attack. The Panther often had been beaten by the Sherman during the campaign in France, and would be defeated on the Ardennes battleground, but in nearly all cases of a forthright tank engagement the Panther lost only when American numerical superiority permitted an M4 to get a shot at flank or tail. Insofar as the Tiger was concerned, the Sherman had to get off a lucky round or the result would be strictly no contest.

The phrase “conflict of interest” barely begins to describe Tom Lanphier’s rabidly partisan approach to advising one of the most powerful congressional allies of the American military-industrial complex. Yet he was in good company. Air force intelligence was crammed with highly competitive analysts who believed they were in a zero-sum game not only with the Russians but also with the army and the navy. If they could make the missile-gap theory stick, America would have to respond with a crash ICBM program of its own. The dominance of the Strategic Air Command in the U.S. military hierarchy would be complete—and Convair would profit mightily. It is hardly surprising that the information Lanphier fed to Symington and Symington to every politician and columnist who would listen was authoritative, alarming, and completely, disastrously wrong. Symington’s “on the record” projection of Soviet nuclear strength, given to Senate hearings on the missile gap in late 1959, was that by 1962 they would have three thousand ICBMs. The actual number was four. Symington’s was a wild guess, an extrapolation based on extrapolations by air force generals who believed it was only responsible to take Khrushchev at his word when, for example, he told journalists in Moscow that a single Soviet factory was producing 250 rockets a year, complete with warheads. Symington knew what he was doing. He wanted to be president and believed rightly that missile-gap scaremongering had helped the Democrats pick up nearly fifty seats in Congress in the 1958 midterm elections. But everyone was at it. The 1958 National Intelligence Estimate had forecast one hundred Soviet ICBMs by 1960 and five hundred by 1962. In January 1960 Allen Dulles, who should have known better because he did know better, told Eisenhower that even though the U-2 had shown no evidence of mass missile production, the Russians could still somehow conjure up two hundred of them in eighteen months. On the political left a former congressional aide called Frank Gibney wrote a baseless five-thousand-word cover story for Harper’s magazine accusing the administration of giving the Soviets a six-to-one lead in ICBMs. (Gibney also recommended putting “a system of really massive retaliation” on the moon.) On the right, Vice President Nixon quietly let friends and pundits know that he felt his own boss didn’t quite get the threat. And in the middle, Joe Alsop wrote a devastating series of columns syndicated to hundreds of newspapers in which he calculated that the Soviets would have 150 ICBMs in ten months flat and suggested that by not matching them warhead for warhead the president was playing Russian roulette with the national future. Alsop, who lived well but expensively in a substantial house in Georgetown, was the Larry King of his day—dapper, superbly well connected, and indefatigable in the pursuit of a good story. His series ran in the last week of January 1960. Khrushchev read it in translation and resolved to steal the thunder of the missile-gap lobby, which was threatening to land him with an arms race that would bankrupt Communism. Before the four-power summit, which was now scheduled for Paris in mid-May, he would offer to dismantle his entire ICBM stockpile. No one needed to know how big or small it was; they just needed to know that he was serious about disarmament. He revealed his plan to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at a secret meeting in the Kremlin on

Frau Heinchen, was the elderly woman with her dog, who talked to me on the windy hillside overlooking Überlingen on Sunday afternoon, December 1, 2002. She recalled the Polish and Russian prisoners, whom she called Cossacks, and vividly remembered the hanging of the Russian soldier, described in “Suppressed I Rise”. According to her, it was the farmer’s wife Clarissa who was raped by the Russian soldier and later, bore his child. She remembered the lager (warehouse) that was used to house the prisoners, saying that it was located on a field near the municipal hospital. She also told us the location of where the one room schoolhouse had been. For the limited time that we talked, she glowed and became twenty-one years young again.

Sitting at the table were three Russian prisoners of war that had been assigned to work on her husband’s farm. Hesitantly, we sat down with these men. I couldn’t understand a word they said and I couldn’t know the awful circumstances under which I would see them again. We stayed at the farm that entire day and she let us sleep in a nice large bed, tucked under the eaves of the attic. It would have been perfect except that we didn’t have any pillows or blankets but at least there wasn’t a corpse in bed with us! The nights were getting cold this time of year, besides the Russians had made me feel considerably uncomfortable. When I asked her about her neighbors she avoided the question and so I thought it best to continue our search, in hopes of a better place to stay.

The Germans, out of a population of under 70 millions, mobilized during the war for military service 13¼ million persons. Of these, according to the latest German official figures for all fronts including the Russian, over 7 millions suffered death, wounds or captivity, of whom nearly 2 millions perished.15 France, with a population of 38 millions, mobilized a little over 8 million persons. This however includes a substantial proportion of African troops outside the French population basis. Of these approximately 5 millions became casualties, of whom 1½ millions lost their lives. The British Empire, out of a white population of 60 millions, mobilized nearly 9½ million persons and sustained over 3 million casualties including nearly a million deaths. The British totals are not directly comparable with those of France and Germany. The proportion of coloured troops is greater. The numbers who fell in theatres other than the western, and those employed on naval service, are both much larger. The French and German figures are however capable of very close comparison. Both the French and German armies fought with their whole strength from the beginning to the end of the war. Each nation made the utmost possible demand upon its population. In these circumstances it is not surprising that the official French and German figures tally with considerable exactness. The Germans mobilized 19 per cent. of their entire population, and the French, with their important African additions, 21 per cent. Making allowance for the African factor, it would appear that in the life-and-death struggle both countries put an equal strain upon their manhood. If this basis is sound—and it certainly appears reasonable—the proportion of French and German casualties to persons mobilized displays an even more remarkable concordance. The proportion of German casualties to total mobilized is 10 out of every 19, and that of the French 10 out of every 16. The ratios of deaths to woundings in Germany and France are almost exactly equal, viz. 2 to 5. Finally these figures yield a division of German losses between the western and all other fronts of approximately 3 to 1 both in deaths and casualties. All

My father sits at the head of a table before the carcass of an enormous American turkey. What he is ashamed of is the one act of decency I have yet encountered in all the tales of our family’s past. A young boy with a dead father and a dead friend bends down before a country dog and feeds it his butter sandwich. And I know that sandwich. Because he has made it for me. Two slices of that dark, unbleached Russian bread, the kind that tastes of badly managed soil and a peasant’s indifference to death. On top of it, the creamiest, deadliest of American butter, slathered in thick feta-like hunks. And on top of that cloves of garlic, the garlic that is to give me strength, that is to clear my lungs of asthmatic gunk, and make of me a real garlic-eating strong man. At a table in Leningrad, and a table in deepest Queens, New York, the ridiculous garlic crunches beneath our teeth as we sit across from each other, the garlic obliterating whatever else we have eaten, and making us one.

The Russians’ great strength is that they will take any losses necessary to destroy an invader. That hasn’t changed since Napoleon.

All your decisions discount the Persians themselves, and that is the mistake of your ignorance and your plotting. To you the Persian is a stupid peasant who can't decide his own affairs; an uncultured wretch who will take all manner of deceit and oppression and diplomatic twisting. If you do see any signs, any glimmer of revolt, you blame the Russians and take it to the Security Council. But it isn't the Russians. It's the peasant himself who is revolting. If any of you understood Iran you would know that. Dirty and wretched they may be, opium-ridden and backward and dull, but they are really the people you should fear, not the Russians. It may take time and there may be set-backs, but sooner or later the Persians are going to throw us out and throw out all our corrupt and friendly governments. They don't need any complicated political excuse to revolt, however much you cry Communism. There isn't a simple man, woman or child in Iran who isn't landlord-ridden,m who isn't a slave by the way in which he works, who isn't preyed upon by corrupt officials, who isn't beaten and insulted and robbed by the police and the army. The peasants are impoverished by the tithes they must pay the Khans, and the mechanics are underpaid and underfed and overworked. There isn't an adult in Iran who isn't ridden with some chronic disease, there isn't a child who survives all the ravages of poverty and dirt and sickness. The whole government structure is rotten with bribery and extortion and petty cruelties, and there isn't a modicum of justice in the land. There are no real courts, no political rights, no representative government, no wage laws, no right to organize, no means of adjusting the bad conditions of life except by revolting as the Azerbaijanians and the Kurds are revolting. Thank heavens the Russians have given them a chance to revolt; and damn us for preventing it wherever we can. We will fail anyway, whatever the Security Council decides in New York. You can get the Russians out of Azerbaijan and you can give it back to your merchants and wazirs of Teheran, but after a little while it will all begin again because you cannot stop the Persian from deciding his own affairs. He is not ignorant and stupid to his political situation. He is not so wretched and afraid of revolt. He is not even uncultured: in the language he speaks and the use he makes of it there is more natural culture among the peasants of Iran than you can find among the world's diplomats a the Savoy Hotel. He is backward and poor and dirty, but that is largely due to the influence we have had on Iran for a hundred years or more. Now it is too late for us. These people have reached the breaking point and they don't care about the wise men of the House of Commons and the clever men of the Security Council. These people are desperate, and for our reckless methods of holding our power and our oil it ought to be a warning. It will all go. The oil, the power, and the last drop of influence. Rather than let us have any of it the Persian will wreck Abadan and the wells and every other sign of our presence and our strength there. They are beginning to hate us and that is beginning a battle which we can't stop, which you can't stop in the Security Council. Unless we are determined to kill every man in the country we will lose. We cannot help but lose.

Every citizen had to have a so-called "passport," an identification booklet, issued by the militia, with all the personal data: place and date of birth, nationality (for us was the label Jew, not Russian or Ukrainian or Moldavian), occupation and place of work, data on military service. People were supposed to carry that passport at all times and anybody in an official uniform or secret police could stop you for identification. The word "passport" was a misnomer, for you could not travel any place on the strength of this identification. Nobody had permission to travel from one town to another. If sent by the workplace, one was issued a "propusk," a permit with the data and destination of travel. Once at the arrival destination, one had to register at the local militia (police). Thus, nobody could travel anywhere without a special permit, even if it were at a distance of 50 miles.

In the morning when he opened his eyes and when his glance fell upon the yellow linen of the curtain by the window, it seemed to him that its yellowness was suffused with the crimson of dark desire and that there was some strange and eerie tenseness in it. It seemed that the sun was insistently and fervently concentrating its burning and bitter rays towards this linen pierced by a golden color and summoning and demanding, and disturbing. And in reply to this fascinating external tension of gold and crimson the veins of the Youth were filled with a fiery agitation. His muscles were suffused with a resilient strength and his heart became like a spring of ardent fires. Sweetly pierced by millions of exciting, burning and arousing needles he leapt up from the bed and with a childlike gleeful laugh he began to leap and dance around the room without dressing. ("The Poison Garden")

Instinctively I reached out and could feel that the object was a shoe; no it was a heavy boot. And then looking up, I realized that there was a man hanging from the tree. As my eyes adjusted to this gruesome sight, I could tell that it was one of the Russian soldiers that I had just recently met over breakfast and now here he was hanging from a noose.

Yes, right has a moral strength before which wrong must bend, for all its boldness.

Seamus sat on the edge of his desk and said, “So what brings you over here this afternoon?” I told him all about my struggles with John Macy. Took about five full minutes. I let my anger roll out while telling the story. When I was finished, my grandfather looked at me and said, “Ask God for strength to deal with morons.” “That’s it?” “And if that doesn’t work, plant cocaine on him.” Seamus waited for a response. When he didn’t get one, he said, “What? Isn’t that what cops do in movies to get someone in trouble?” I kept a straight face and said, “In real life we’d plant child pornography on his computer.” “Ah, the new millennium.

A part war drama, part coming-of-age story, part spiritual pilgrimage, Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is the story of a young woman who experienced more hardships before graduating high school than most people do in a lifetime. Yet her heartaches are only half the story; the other half is a story of resilience, of leaving her lifelong home in Germany to find a new home, a new life, and a new love in America. Mildred Schindler Janzen has given us a time capsule of World War II and the years following it, filled with pristinely preserved memories of a bygone era. Ken Gire New York Times bestselling author of All the Gallant Men The memoir of Mildred Schindler Janzen will inform and inspire all who read it. This is a work that pays tribute to the power and resiliency of the human spirit to endure, survive, and overcome in pursuit of the freedom and liberty that all too many take for granted. Kirk Ford, Jr., Professor Emeritus, History Mississippi College Author of OSS and the Yugoslav Resistance, 1943-1945 A compelling first-person account of life in Germany during the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party. A well written, true story of a young woman overcoming the odds and rising above the tragedies of loss of family and friends during a savage and brutal war, culminating in her triumph in life through sheer determination and will. A life lesson for us all. Col. Frank Janotta (Retired), Mississippi Army National Guard Mildred Schindler Janzen’s touching memoir is a testimony to God’s power to deliver us from the worst evil that men can devise. The vivid details of Janzen’s amazing life have been lovingly mined and beautifully wrought by Sherye Green into a tender story of love, gratitude, and immeasurable hope. Janzen’s rich, post-war life in Kansas serves as a powerful reminder of the great promise of America. Troy Matthew Carnes, Author of Rasputin’s Legacy and Dudgeons and Daggers World War II was horrific, and we must never forget. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is a must-read that sheds light on the pain the Nazis and then the Russians inflicted on the German Jews and the German people. Mildred Schindler Janzen’s story, of how she and her mother and brother survived the war and of the special document that allowed Mildred to come to America, is compelling. Mildred’s faith sustained her during the war's horrors and being away from her family, as her faith still sustains her today. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is a book worth buying for your library, so we never forget. Cynthia Akagi, Ph.D. Northcentral University I wish all in the world could read Mildred’s story about this loving steel magnolia of a woman who survived life under Hitler’s reign. Mildred never gave up, but with each suffering, grew stronger in God’s strength and eternal hope. Beautifully written, this life story will captivate, encourage, and empower its readers to stretch themselves in life, in love, and with God, regardless of their circumstances. I will certainly recommend this book. Renae Brame, Author of Daily Devotions with Our Beloved, God’s Peaceful Waters Flow, and Snow and the Eternal Hope How utterly inspiring to read the life story of a woman whose every season reflects God’s safe protection and unfailing love. When young Mildred Schindler escaped Nazi Germany, only to have her father taken by Russians and her mother and brother hidden behind Eastern Europe’s Iron Curtain, she courageously found a new life in America. Surviving Hitler, Evading Stalin is her personal witness to God’s guidance and provision at every step of that perilous journey. How refreshing to view a full life from beginning to remarkable end – always validating that nothing is impossible with God. Read this book and you will discover the author’s secret to life: “My story is a declaration that choosing joy and thankfulness over bitterness and anger, even amid difficult circumsta

A people can value nothing more highly than the dignity and liberty of its existence, that it must defend these to the last drop of its blood, so there is no higher duty to fulfil, no higher law to obey, that the shameful blood of cowardly submission can never be erased, that this drop of poisoning in the blood of a nation is passed on to posterity, crippling and eroding the strength of future generations.

theory of limit loads,

Unless you are in the hospital you are expected to come to all family activities. However, if you are in the hospital, the dinner will be brought to you, because you cannot possibly eat hospital food, my goodness no. It will kill you. Russian food will build your strength up again, and here is a small shot of vodka.

To counter communist intransigence, Kelly remarked, would require a “two-front defense,” each as important as the other. Americans “are faced with maintaining a military strength adequate to deter the Russians from a general war, while at the same time maintaining a civilian economy that provides our people with an increasingly abundant life.” Both pursuits were to him necessary, and so he decided to split his lab, and his career, between the two.

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.

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.

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.]

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.

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.

Ludvig Chaplinskiy wrote in the Russian magazine Hercules in 1913, “Kettlebell lifting more than any other sport relies on nerve strength; its sensible practice strengthens the nervous system, mindless practice destroys it.

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.

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:

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.

The Red Army and the kettlebell are inseparable. Every Russian military unit has a gym called “the courage corner.” Every courage corner is equipped with kettlebells. While other countries waste time testing their troopers with push-ups, Russia tests repetition kettlebell snatches with a 53-pound kettlebell. “The rank and file of the Red Army was magnificent from a physical point of view,” marveled Lt. Gen. Giffard Martel, chief of the British military mission to the USSR during World War II. “Much of the equipment we carry on vehicles accompanying the infantry is carried on the man’s back in Russia. The Russians seem capable of carrying these great loads. They are exceptionally tough.

The subversive Vodka, Pickle Juice, Kettlebell Lifting, and Other Russian Pastimes was published in 1998. The article was extremely well received by the most ruthless critics in the strength world. I started getting mail from guys with busted noses, cauliflower ears, scars, or at least Hells Angels tattoos. Incredulous, I told my friend and editor John Du Cane about it. He thought for a minute and said: “Let’s do it! I’ll make kettlebells and you teach people how to use them.

2001 was the year of the kettlebell. Dragon Door published The Russian Kettlebell Challenge and forged the first US made Russian style cast iron kettlebell. RKC, the first kettlebell instructor course on American soil, also kicked off in 2001. Given the kettlebell’s harsh reputation, most of my early students looked like they came from the federal witness protection program. People often ask if Steve Maxwell and I are brothers. Steve, I love you, man, but I don’t think it’s a compliment for either of us.

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.

It is hard to understand the logic of governments—both Russian and American—that encourage inmates to strength train, but Russian prisoners lift kettlebells as well.

Siberian scientist Shevtsova (1993) verified what is obvious to any girevik. She studied 75 gireviks with three to five years of experience and recorded a long-term decrease in the heart rate and the blood pressure. The kettlebellers had what Russians call “a cosmonaut’s blood pressure”: 110/70 in the summer and 114/74 in the winter. They clocked an average resting heart rate of 56 beats per minute. The heart rate took a dive not just at rest, but also during and after exercise. And the time it took the heart to slow down back to normal, after exercise, also decreased. Besides, the experienced gireviks’ systems had also adapted to be better “primed” and ready for upcoming action.

Russian kettlebells traditionally come in poods. One pood, an old Russian unit of measurement, equals 16 kilograms, approximately 35 pounds. The most popular sizes in Russia are 1 pood, the right kettlebell for a typical male beginner; 1 1/2 pood, or a 53-pounder, the standard issue in the military; and the “double,” as the 2-pood, or 70-pound kettlebell, is called. Doubles are for advanced gireviks.

In Russia kettlebells are a matter of national pride and a symbol of strength. In the olden days, any strongman or weightlifter was referred to as a girevik, or “kettlebell man.” Steeled by their kettlebells, generation after generation of Russian boys has turned to men.

Guys name their kettlebells like they name their guns. They paint them with their units’ coats of arms. They get tattoos of kettlebells. The Russian kettlebell is the Harley-Davidson of weights.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Women fought for suffrage around the world. First to win it were New Zealanders, in 1893—but no New Zealand woman held a high-level political position until 1947. Women in South Australia won the vote in 1894, and it was the first state to allow them to stand for parliament, but other Australian women had to wait until 1947. Finnish women voted in 1904 after only twenty years of agitation; Russian women in 1917, after the revolution. Sometimes women won suffrage but remained barred from highlevel political life. In Norway, women won the vote in 1913, but did not begin to stand for high political office until 1945; Sweden, 1919 and 1947; the Netherlands, 1919 and 1956; Germany, 1919 and 1956; Brazil, 1932 and 1982; and Turkey, 1934 and 1971. In Egypt, men adamantly opposed woman suffrage until 1956. Other countries surrendered even later. But women won. And they won with only themselves—without weapons, political rights, or much wealth, they had only their minds, bodies, spirits, voices, influence, charm, rage, tenderness, and strength to turn the world around. And they did.

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.

There is nothing they [Russian leaders] admire so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness.

Time to start by buying a 300 pound Olympic weight set: a barbell with plates.

The confidence of amateurs is the envy of professionals.

Apart from safety, there are many reasons to lift and lower your weights slowly: three to five seconds on the way up and three to five on the way down is the Power to the People! rule. First, muscular tension drops off as the velocity increases. Considering that tension is what we are after, it is a dumb idea. Just note that the athletes with the most spectacular muscular definition are those from sports requiring slow exertions, such as gymnastics.

It summoned militant Marxists to form a “new guard” under whose aegis Russian Social Democracy would emerge from its crisis into the full strength of manhood. It breathed a spirit of revolutionary voluntarism, of confidence in the capacity of such a small but well-organized elite of Marxist revolutionaries to build up an oppositional mass movement in Russian society and lead it to victory over the seemingly impregnable tsarist government. Most important of all, it prescribed in clear and definite terms what should be done towards this end, and thus it pointed the way for Russian Marxists from revolutionary talk to revolutionary action, gave them a practical plan and tasks to perform.

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.