The Last Man in Russia Quotes

“He realized that trust between people is what makes us happy. Any totalitarian state is based on betrayal. It needs people to inform on each other, to avoid socializing to interact only through the state and to avoid unsanctioned meetings.”
― Oliver Bullough, The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation

“The Soviet state was, in fact, almost perfectly designed to make people unhappy. It denied its citizens not just hope, but also trust. Every activity had to be sanctioned by the state. Any person could be an informant. No action could be guaranteed to be without consequence. Father Dmitry preached friendship and warmth and belief to his parishioners, and inspired a generation to live as humans and not as parts of a machine.”
― Oliver Bullough, The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation

“Russians consider themselves civilized Europeans, but have to endure the humiliation of daily encounters with officials that belong in a squalid dictatorship.”
― Oliver Bullough, The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation

“Prosperity and democracy does seem to be a good way to wean a population off massive alcohol abuse.”
― Oliver Bullough, The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation

“[Father Dmitry] “lived through collectivization, the crushing of the 80 percent of Russians that were peasants. He served as a soldier in World War Two, when millions of peasants died defending the government that had crushed them. He spent eight years in the gulag, the network of labour camps created to break the spirit of anyone who still resisted. He rose again to speak out for his parishioners in the 1960’s and 1970’s, striving to help young Russians create a freer and fairer society.”
― Oliver Bullough, The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation

“That was the choice that Father Dmitri was given. As a Russian, he wanted to support Russia. As a Christian, he wanted to oppose the Soviet Union. But, if he opposed the Soviet Union, he was allying with foreigners and thus fighting against Russia. He had to choose, therefore, between his religion and his country and he chose his country. That was how he himself justified his choice.”
― Oliver Bullough, The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation

“But Father Dmitry and his friends were together, and they were not afraid. In the words of Andrei Amalrik, one of the founders of the Moscow Helsinki Group and a prolific writer, ‘The dissidents accomplished something that was simple to the point of genius: in an unfree country they behaved like free men, thereby changing the moral atmosphere and the nation’s governing traditions.”
― Oliver Bullough, The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation