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People didn’t recognize their own slavery—they even liked being slaves.
Everyone thought of themselves as a victim, never a willing accomplice.
No one had taught us how to be free. We had only ever been taught how to die for freedom.
People are constantly forced to choose between having freedom and having success and stability; freedom with suffering or happiness without freedom. The majority choose the latter.
Lenin once said that revolutions come when they want to, not when we want them to.
They called me into the district Party committee, “Unfortunately, we will not be able to return your wife to you. She’s died. But you can have your honor back…” And they handed me back my Party membership card. And I was happy! I was so happy…
For many Russians, it was party over everything. Even over their own family/spouses.
There are no heroes in war. As soon as someone picks up a weapon, they can no longer be good.
There are as many bones as stones in this soil.
Talking about Karaganda, one of the gulags in Kazakhstan
Even Stalin…even he’d say, “I’m not the one who decides, it’s the Party.” He taught his son: You think that I’m Stalin—you’re wrong! That’s Stalin! And he’d point to the portrait of himself hanging on the wall. Not at himself, but at his portrait.
Pain has everything: darkness, triumph. Sometimes I think that pain is a bridge between people, a secret connection; other times, it seems like an abyss.
The uprising I witnessed terrified me for the rest of my life; I know what it looks like when freedom falls into inexperienced hands. Idle chatter always ends in blood. War is a wolf that can come to your door as well…[
