Quotes from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“Perhaps 20 million had been killed; 28 million deported, of whom 18 million had slaved in the Gulags. Yet, after so much slaughter, they were still believers.”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, quote from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“Old Molotov was asked if he dreamed about Stalin: “Not often but sometimes. The circumstances are very unusual. I’m in some sort of destroyed city and I can’t find a way out. Afterwards, I meet HIM...”1”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, quote from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“That doesn’t matter. Gorky’s a vain man. We must bind him with cables to the Party,” replied Stalin.3 It worked: during the kulak liquidation, Gorky unleashed his hatred of the backward peasants in Pravda: “If the enemy does not surrender, he must be exterminated.” He toured concentration camps and admired their re-educational value. He supported slave labour projects such as the Belomor Canal which he visited with Yagoda, whom he congratulated: “You rough fellows do not realize what great work you’re doing!”4 Yagoda,”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, quote from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“twenties, served as his judge in 1937 and even denounced a”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, quote from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“Beneath the eerie calm of these unfathomable waters were deadly whirlpools of ambition, anger and unhappiness.”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, quote from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“Perhaps 20 million had been killed; 28 million deported, of whom 18 million had slaved in the Gulags. Yet, after so much slaughter, they were still believers. At”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, quote from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“The Bolsheviks were atheists but they were hardly secular politicians in the conventional sense: they stooped to kill from the smugness of the highest moral eminence. Bolshevism may not have been a religion, but it was close enough. Stalin told Beria the Bolsheviks were “a sort of military-religious order.” When Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, died, Stalin called him “a devout knight of the proletariat.” Stalin’s “order of sword-bearers” resembled the Knights Templars, or even the theocracy of the Iranian Ayatollahs, more than any traditional secular movement. They would die and kill for their faith in the inevitable progress towards human betterment, making sacrifices of their own families, with a fervour seen only in the religious slaughters and martyrdoms of the Middle Ages—and the Middle East. They”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, quote from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“The Party justified its “dictatorship” through purity of faith. Their Scriptures were the teachings of Marxism-Leninism, regarded as a “scientific” truth. Since ideology was so important, every leader had to be—or seem to be—an expert on Marxism-Leninism, so that these ruffians spent their weary nights studying, to improve their esoteric credentials, dreary articles on dialectical materialism. It was so important that Molotov and Polina even discussed Marxism in their love letters: “Polichka my darling . . . reading Marxist classics is very necessary . . . You must read some more of Lenin’s works coming out soon and then a number of Stalin’s . . . I so want to see you.”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, quote from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

“Party-mindedness” was “an almost mystical concept,” explained Kopelev. “The indispensable prerequisites were iron discipline and faithful observance of all the rituals of Party life.” As one veteran Communist put it, a Bolshevik was not someone who believed merely in Marxism but “someone who had absolute faith in the Party no matter what . . . A person with the ability to adapt his morality and conscience in such a way that he can unreservedly accept the dogma that the Party is never wrong—even though it’s wrong all the time.” Stalin did not exaggerate when he boasted: “We Bolsheviks are people of a special cut.”2 Nadya”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, quote from Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar

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“He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumi’s note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.”
― John Green, quote from Looking for Alaska

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
― Mark Haddon, quote from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

“What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“He slid back again into his earlier position. "This getting up early," he thought, "makes a man quite idiotic. A man must have his sleep. Other travelling salesmen live like harem women. For instance, when I come back to the inn during the course of the morning to write up the necessary orders, these gentlemen are just sitting down to breakfast. If I were to try that with my boss, I'd be thrown out on the spot. Still, who knows whether that mightn't be really good for me? If I didn't hold back for my parents' sake, I'd have quit ages ago. I would've gone to the boss and told him just what I think from the bottom of my heart. He would've fallen right off his desk! How weird it is to sit up at that desk and talk down to the employee from way up there. The boss has trouble hearing, so the employee has to step up quite close to him. Anyway, I haven't completely given up that hope yet. Once I've got together the money to pay off my parents' debt to him—that should take another five or six years—I'll do it for sure. Then I'll make the big break. In any case, right now I have to get up. My train leaves at five o'clock”
― Franz Kafka, quote from The Metamorphosis

“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”
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