How many quotes did Orlando Figes wrote?

The author Orlando Figes wrote around 32 of quotes.

32 Orlando Figes Quotes on Gulag, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 and Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag

Q: What is the best Orlando Figes quote?

"Sveta had much less to say, but she sat with Lev and held his hand, and when I asked her what had made her fall in love with him, she replied, ‘I knew he was my future. When he was not there, I would look for him, and he would always appear by my side. That is love.’ Sveta" - Orlando Figes

Q: What are some Orlando Figes quotes?

"The link between literacy and revolutions is a well-known historical phenomenon. The three great revolutions of modern European history -- the English, the French and the Russian -- all took place in societies where the rate of literacy was approaching 50 per cent. Literacy had a profound effect on the peasant mind and community. It promotes abstract thought and enables the peasant to master new skills and technologies, Which in turn helps him to accept the concept of progress that fuels change in the modern world." "For all too many of these high-born revolutionaries, the main attraction of 'the cause' lay not so much in the satisfaction which they might derive from seeing the people's daily lives improved, as in their own romantic search for sense of 'wholeness' which might give higher meaning to their lives and to end alienation from the world." "Convinced that their own ideas were the key to the future of the world, that the fate of humanity rested on the outcome of their own doctrinal struggles, the Russian intelligentsia divided up the world into the forces of 'progress' and 'reaction', friends and enemies of the people's cause, leaving no room for doubters in between. Here were the origins of the totalitarian world-view. Although neither would have liked to admit it, there was much in common between Lenin and Tolstoy." - Orlando Figes

Q: What are some short Orlando Figes quotes?

"On the news that the Tsar had sent the troops icons to boost their morals, General Dragomirov quipped: 'The Japanese are beating us with machine-guns, but never mind: we'll beat them with icons." "For the Romanov regime fell under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It was not overthrown." "The peasant also found another use for this sacred object. 'He says of the icon: "It's good for praying -- and you can cover the pots with it too." - Orlando Figes

I, Nikolai Ivanov, renounce my father, an ex-priest, because for many years he deceived the people by telling them that God exists, and that is the reason I am severing all my relations with him.77

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia Quotes

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. . .

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Bloody sunday Quotes Gapon Quotes

The ancient bond between the tsarist state and Russian nationalism could be used to create powerful emotions when the enemy came from the heathen east. The Mongol invasion had left a powerful mark on the Russian psyche. It was expressed in a deep anxiety about the mixed Eurasian roots of the people and it's culture, which made it easy for an educated liberal to convince themselves that this war was nothing less than a defense of Russia's European identity against the Asian hordes.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Rosso japanese war Quotes

Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855)

Crimean war Quotes

Gorky called for the building of a monument to the young martyr, who, the writer said, had ‘understood that a relative by blood may also be an enemy of the spirit, and that such a person is not to be spared’.69

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia Quotes

The only way, they argued, to prevent a revolution was to rule Russia with an iron hand. This meant defending the autocratic principle, the unchecked powers of the police, the hegemony of the nobility, and the moral domination of the Church, against the liberal and secular challenges of the urban-industrialize order.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Autocracy Quotes

Pavlik denounced his father’s crimes, and when Trofim shouted out, ‘It’s me, your father,’ the boy told the judge: ‘Yes, he used to be my father, but I no longer consider him my father. I am not acting as a son, but as a Pioneer.

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia Quotes

Political indoctrination was geared towards producing activists. The propaganda image of the ideal child was a precocious political orator mouthing agitprop. Communism could not be taught from books, educational thinkers maintained. It had to be instilled through the whole life of the school, which was in turn to be connected to the broader world of politics through extra-curricular activities, such as celebrating Soviet holidays, joining public marches, reading newspapers and organizing school debates and trials. The idea was to initiate the children into the practices, cults and rituals of the Soviet system so that they would grow up to become loyal and active Communists.

Children Quotes Communism Quotes Indoctrination Quotes Propaganda Quotes Soviet union Quotes The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia Quotes

The word ‘soviet’ means ‘council’ in Russian (there was nothing particularly Communist about it until after 1917).

Revolutionary Russia Quotes 1891-1991: A History Quotes

Lenin arrived a stranger to Russia. Apart from a six-month stay in 1905-6, he had spent the previous seventeen years in exile abroad. Most of the workers who turned out to meet him at the Finland Station could never have seen him before.'I know very little of Russia,' Lenin once told Gorky. 'Simbirsk, Kazan, Petersburg, exile - that is all I know." During 1917 he would often claim that the mass of the ordinary people were even further to the Left than the Bolsheviks. Yet he had no experience of them, and knew only what his party agents told him (which was often what he wanted to hear). Between 5 July and the October seizure of power Lenin did not make a single public appearance. He barely set foot in the provinces. The man who was set to become the dictator of Russia had almost no direct knowledge of the way its people lived. Apart from two years as a lawyer, he had never even had a job. He was a "professional revolutionary', living apart from society and supporting himself from the party's funds and from the income of him mother's estate (which he continued to draw until her death in 1916). According to Gorky, it was this ignorance of everyday work, and the human suffering which it entailed, which had bred in Lenin a 'pitiless contempt, worthy of a nobleman, for the lives of the ordinary people...Life in all its complexity us unknown to Lenin. He does not know the ordinary people. He has never lived among them.

Lenin Quotes

The currents of modern civilization had somehow passed it by, and as he returned to it now, fresh from the sides of England and France, Sergei Semenov saw only familiar signs of backwardness and decay.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Saudi arabia Quotes

The moonlight was still floating on the waters, when men, looking from numberless decks towards the east, were able to hail the dawn. There was a summer breeze blowing fair from the land. At a quarter before five a gun from the Britannia gave the signal to weigh. The air was obscured by the busy smoke of the engines, and it was hard to see how and whence due order would come; but presently the Agamemnon moved through, and with signals at all her masts – for Lyons was on board her, and was governing and ordering the convoy. The French steamers of war went out with their transports in tow, and their great vessels formed the line. The French went out more quickly than the English, and in better order. Many of their transports were vessels of very small size; and of necessity they were a swarm. Our transports went out in five columns of only thirty each. Then – guard over all – the English war-fleet, in single column, moved slowly out of the bay.50

Crimean war Quotes

To the less privileged it was this arbitrariness that made the regime's power feel so oppressive. There were no clear principles or regulations which enabled the individual to challenge authority or the state.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Autocracy Quotes

The peasant also found another use for this sacred object. 'He says of the icon: "It's good for praying -- and you can cover the pots with it too.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Religious icon Quotes

These romantic visions of the peasantry were constantly undone by contact with reality, often with devastating consequences for their bearers. The populists, who invested much of themselves in their conception of the peasants, suffered the most in this respect, since the disintegration of that conception threatened to undermine not only their radical beliefs but also their own self-identity.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Peasants Quotes Populists Quotes

The 'noble savage' whom the Populists had seen in the simple peasant was, as Gorky now concluded, no more than a romantic illusion. And the more he experienced the everyday life of the peasant, the more he denounced them as savage and barbaric.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Peasants Quotes

With the Russian Empire teetering on the brink of collapse, the tsarist regime responded to the crises with its usual incompetence and obstinacy. The basic problem was that Nicholas himself remained totally oblivious to the extremity of the situation. While the country sank deeper into chaos he continued to fill his diary with terse and trivial notes on the weather, the company at tea and the number of birds he had shot that day. When Bulygin suggested that political concessions might be needed to calm the country, Nicholas was taken aback and told the Minister: 'One would think you are afraid a revolution will break out.' 'Your majesty,' came the reply, 'the revolution has already begun.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Nicholas ii Quotes

For the Romanov regime fell under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It was not overthrown.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes

In the mind of the ordinary peasant the Tsar was not just a kingly ruler but a god on earth. He thought of him as a father-figure who knew all the peasants personally by name, understood their problems in all their minute details, and, if it were not for the evil boyars who surrounded him, would satisfy their demands. Hence the peasant tradition of sending direct appeals to the Tsar.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Autocracy Quotes

The worst violence was reserved for the Jews. There were 690 documented pogroms -- with over 3,000 reported murders -- during the two weeks following the deceleration of the October Manifesto. The Rightist groups played a leading role in these programs, either by inciting the crowed against the Jews or by planning them from the start.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Antisemitism Quotes

Whereas in Western countries the constitution merely had to guarantee the rights of a per-existing civil society and culture, in Russia it also had to create these. It had to educate society - and the state itself - into the values and ideas of liberal constitutionalism.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Constitution Quotes

In 1846 Easter fell on the same date in the Latin and Greek Orthodox calendars, so the holy shrines were much more crowded than usual, and the mood was very tense. The two religious communities had long been arguing about who should have first right to carry out their Good Friday rituals on the altar of Calvary inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the spot where the cross of Jesus was supposed to have been inserted in the rock. During recent years the rivalry between the Latins and the Greeks had reached such fever pitch that Mehmet Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Jerusalem, had been forced to position soldiers inside and outside the church to preserve order. But even this had not prevented fights from breaking out. On this Good Friday the Latin priests arrived with their white linen altar-cloth to find that the Greeks had got there first with their silk embroidered cloth. The Catholics demanded to see the Greeks’ firman, their decree from the Sultan in Constantinople, empowering them to place their silk cloth on the altar first. The Greeks demanded to see the Latins’ firman allowing them to remove it. A fight broke out between the priests, who were quickly joined by monks and pilgrims on either side. Soon the whole church was a battlefield. The rival groups of worshippers fought not only with their fists, but with crucifixes, candlesticks, chalices, lamps and incense-burners, and even bits of wood which they tore from the sacred shrines. The fighting continued with knives and pistols smuggled into the Holy Sepulchre by worshippers of either side. By the time the church was cleared by Mehmet Pasha’s guards, more than forty people lay dead on the floor.1

Crimean war Quotes

Their notion of training was to march the men up and down in parades and reviews: these were nice to look at and gave them the impression of military discipline and precision, but as a preparation for a modern war they had no value whatsoever.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Military Quotes

...from the perspective of the individual, it could be said that the single greatest difference between Russia and the West, both under Tsarism and Communism, was that in Western Europe citizens were generally free to do as they pleased so long as their activities had not been specifically prohibited by the state, while the people of Russia were not free to do anything unless the state had given them specific permission to do it. No subject of the Tsar, regardless of his rank or class, could sleep securely in his bed in the knowledge that his house would not be subject to a search, or he himself to arrest.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Russia Quotes

This was a cruelty made by history. Long after serfdom had been abolished the land captains exercised their right to flog the peasants for petty crimes. Liberals rightly warned about the psychological effects of this brutality. One physician, addressing the Kazan Medical Society in 1895 said that it 'not only debases but even hardens and brutalizes human nature'. Chekhov, who was also a practising physician, denounced corporal punishment, adding that 'it coarsens and brutalizes not only the offenders but also those who execute the punishments and those who are present at it'.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Brutality Quotes Corporal punishment Quotes

On the news that the Tsar had sent the troops icons to boost their morals, General Dragomirov quipped: 'The Japanese are beating us with machine-guns, but never mind: we'll beat them with icons.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Russo japanese war Quotes

Whereas in Europe new ideas were forced to compete against other doctrines and attitudes, with the results that people tended towards healthy skepticism about claims to absolute truth, and a climate of pluralism developed, In Russia there was a cultural void. The censor forbade all political expression, so that when ideas were introduced there they easily assumed the status of holy dogma, a panacea for all the world's ills, beyond questioning or indeed the need to test them in real life.

I understood that the most terrible thing in life is complete hopelessness... To cross out all the 'maybes' and give up the fight when you still have strength for it is the most terrible form of suicide. It's almost unbearable to watch it happening in others. Unjustified hope - salvation for the weak in spirit and intellect - irritates me. But the loss of hope is the paralysis, even the death, of the soul. Sveta, let us hope, while we still have strength to hope.

Hope Quotes / Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag Quotes

Convinced that their own ideas were the key to the future of the world, that the fate of humanity rested on the outcome of their own doctrinal struggles, the Russian intelligentsia divided up the world into the forces of 'progress' and 'reaction', friends and enemies of the people's cause, leaving no room for doubters in between. Here were the origins of the totalitarian world-view. Although neither would have liked to admit it, there was much in common between Lenin and Tolstoy.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Lenin Quotes Tolstoy Quotes

For all too many of these high-born revolutionaries, the main attraction of 'the cause' lay not so much in the satisfaction which they might derive from seeing the people's daily lives improved, as in their own romantic search for sense of 'wholeness' which might give higher meaning to their lives and to end alienation from the world.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes

The link between literacy and revolutions is a well-known historical phenomenon. The three great revolutions of modern European history -- the English, the French and the Russian -- all took place in societies where the rate of literacy was approaching 50 per cent. Literacy had a profound effect on the peasant mind and community. It promotes abstract thought and enables the peasant to master new skills and technologies, Which in turn helps him to accept the concept of progress that fuels change in the modern world.

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 Quotes Literacy Quotes Peasants Quotes Revolutionary wars Quotes

Sveta had much less to say, but she sat with Lev and held his hand, and when I asked her what had made her fall in love with him, she replied, ‘I knew he was my future. When he was not there, I would look for him, and he would always appear by my side. That is love.’ Sveta

Love Quotes / Gulag Quotes Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag Quotes Russia Quotes Soulmates Quotes

32 Orlando Figes Quotes on Gulag, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 and Just Send Me Word: A True Story of Love and Survival in the Gulag - Quotes.pub