Michal Pivarči

“We know hunger, we are used to hunger: we feel hungry two, three times a day. There is nothing more frequent, more constant, more present in our lives than hunger - and, at the same time, for most of us, nothing more distant than real hunger.

We know hunger, we are used to hunger: we feel hungry two, three times a day. But between this repeated, daily, repeatedly and daily satiated hunger that we live with, and the desperate hunger of those who cannot cope with it, there is a world of differences and inequalities. […] Nothing has had a greater influence on the history of mankind. No disease, no war has killed more people. No plague remains as lethal and, at the same time, as avoidable as hunger.”
― Martín Caparrós, Głód

“Ivan Ivanovich, or John son of John. He is a kind of Russian Mr. Nobody. Like calling someone Jan Kowalski in Poland, Pepík Vondráček in Czechia and John Smith in England. Even the dummy, which flew into space on the Vostok ship before Gagarin, they called Ivan Ivanovich.

And in Stalin's prison camps this was an insult. This is what they called all professors, writers, artists, engineers, party officials, teachers - all intelligentsia. Their fate in that era was most terrible.

Successive waves of purges wiped out at least half of the Russian intelligentsia. They were executed or thrown into gulags. This is how the "monstrous selection of the Stalinist period was carried out," writes former prisoner Wiera Szulc in her memoirs, "which created, it would seem, a new species of people: humble, numb, lacking initiative, silent. The Soviet man was born, homo sovieticus, an individual without even a hint of rebelliousness, but with a great talent for thievery. That's where it's still said that a thief doesn't steal, he just takes what lies wrong. The new Soviet man is a will-less, fearful, lazy man who suffers from the syndrome of silence and the syndrome of the poputchik. He is a man who does not shout his pain from his soul, but whispers it to a stranger on the road. Or he desensitizes it with vodka.”
― Jacek Hugo-Bader, Dzienniki kolymskie

“Každý muž, který zradil vlast, je nepřítelem národa a musí být potrestán smrtí nebo odsouzen k pobytu v lágru. Pokud ten muž žil se ženou, tak je i ona nepřítelem národa a musí být poslána do lágru. Tato žena se od té chvíle nazývá rodinným příslušníkem zrádce národa. Kdyby spolu měli děti, každé z nich se stane nepřítelem národa a musí být potrestáno a odsouzeno spolu s matkou a následně podrobeno resocializaci v dětském domově pro nepřátele národa. Může se stát, že nepřítel národa porodí nepřítele národa až v lágru. V tom případě musí být takové dítě matce odebráno a předáno do výše uvedeného dětského domova. Každý den nezletilého nepřítele národa musí začínat společným veselým zvoláním: „Děkujeme, soudruhu Staline, za naše šťastné dětství!”
― Magdalena Grzebałkowska, Wojenka. O dzieciach, które dorosły bez ostrzeżenia

“Munich has become a symbol, in Europe and beyond, of how vulnerable liberal democracies are if they succumb to the illusion that they can save themselves and their values without confronting the expansionism of a totalitarian power at their doorstep. Munich was a defining moment for Europe: it sacrificed its principles and commitments to preserve "peace in our time", as the appeasers understood it. It has suffered dishonour to avoid war, but in the end it has suffered "dishonour and war", as Churchill aptly said in his speech in the House of Commons.”
― Jacques Rupnik, Střední Evropa je jako pták s očima vzadu: O české minulosti a přítomnosti