Portal:Russia/Selected quote/1
| We don't appreciate what we have until it's gone. Freedom is like that. It's like air. When you have it, you don't notice it.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/2
| I could have gone on flying through space forever.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/3
| We do not want a single foot of foreign territory; but we will not surrender a single inch of our territory to anyone.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/4
| Russia has made its choice in favor of democracy. Fourteen years ago, independently, without any pressure from outside, it made that decision in the interests of itself and interests of its people -- of its citizens. This is our final choice, and we have no way back. There can be no return to what we used to have before. And the guarantee for this is the choice of the Russian people, themselves. No, guarantees from outside cannot be provided. This is impossible. It would be impossible for Russia today. Any kind of turn towards totalitarianism for Russia would be impossible, due to the condition of the Russian society.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/5
| Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations—such is the national program that Marxism, the experience of the whole world, and the experience of Russia, teach the workers.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/6
| If the Russian word "perestroika" has easily entered the international lexicon, this is due to more than just interest in what is going on in the Soviet Union. Now the whole world needs restructuring, i.e. progressive development, a fundamental change.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/7
| Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/8
| I would have preferred to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work - for example, a lawn-mower.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/9
| My arms are up to my elbows in blood. That is the most terrible thing that lies in my soul.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/10
| I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/11
| A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth--science--which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/12
| Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain — at least in a poor country like Russia — and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. In America it takes an automobile to produce this effect.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/13
| We bow our heads in respect for those Soviet women who displayed exceptional courage in the severe time of war. Never before but during the days of the war the grandeur of spirit and the invincible will of our Soviet women, their selfless dedication, loyalty and affection to their Homeland, their boundless persistence in work and their heroism on the front manifested themselves with such strength.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/14
| In my view, the composer, just as the poet, the sculptor or the painter, is in duty bound to serve Man, the people. He must beautify human life and defend it. He must be a citizen first and foremost, so that his art might consciously extol human life and lead man to a radiant future. Such is the immutable code of art as I see it.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/15
| Generalissimo Stalin directed every move ... made every decision ... He is the greatest and wisest military genius who ever lived...
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/16
| You know, I never planned to leave. I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. You know, I played their game, pretending, of course. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB... Horrifying.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/17
| I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing; it's not a western invention. It's probably the most affordable mechanism to solve problems inside the country, inside the society because Putin proved to all of us that democracy has a world of alternatives, security forces and police and power abuse and that's why I think eventually the people of Russia will embrace democracy as the least costly institution to help them to solve their daily problems.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/18
| In Russia we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/19
| We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial - whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.
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Portal:Russia/Selected quote/20
| Elections are not a viable means of ensuring democratic change in Russia.
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