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The oprichniks drag the noble by the legs from the porch to the gates on his last outing.
How sweet to leave one’s own seed in the womb of the wife of an enemy of the state.
Absolutely vile. Sorokin captures the reprehensible characteristics of these madmen.
Each time I stand in Uspensky Cathedral with a candle in my hand, I think secret, treasonous thoughts on one subject: What if we didn’t exist?
Actually, I didn’t join…You don’t join the oprichnina. You don’t choose it. It chooses you.
The main square of our country is cheerful, musical. As a boy I witnessed an entirely different Red Square—grim, stern, frightening, with a big pile of granite housing the corpse of the Red Revolt’s maker.
His Majesty’s father, the late Nikolai Platonovich, had a good idea: liquidate all the foreign supermarkets and replace them with Russian kiosks. And put two types of each thing in every kiosk, so the people have a choice. A wise decision, profound. Because our God-bearing people should choose from two things, not from three or thirty-three. Choosing one of two creates spiritual calm, people are imbued with certainty in the future, superfluous fuss and bother is avoided, and consequently—everyone is satisfied. And when a people such as ours is satisfied, great deeds may be accomplished.
Batya is the first to enter. Naked, like Adam, we follow him.
His Tatar feet walk along a Russian spine.
