Imperium Quotes

“All dictators, irrespective of epoch or country, have one common trait: they know everything, are experts on everything. The thoughts of Qadaffi and Ceauşescu, Idi Amin and Alfredo Stroessner—there is no end to the profundities and wisdom. Stalin was expert on history, economics, poetry, and linguistics. As it turned out, he was also expert on architecture.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Three plagues, three contagions, threaten the world.
The first is the plague of nationalism.
The second is the plague of racism.
The third is the plague of religious fundamentalism.
All three share one trait, a common denominator--an aggressive, all-powerful, total irrationality. Anyone stricken with one of these plagues is beyond reason. In his head burns a sacred pyre that awaits its sacrificial victims.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“The train is speeding into a luminous future. Lenin is at the controls. Suddenly—stop, the tracks come to an end. Lenin calls on the people for additional, Saturday work, tracks are laid down, and the train moves on. Now Stalin is driving it. Again the tracks end. Stalin orders half the conductors and passengers shot, and the rest he forces to lay down new tracks. The train starts again. Khrushchev replaces Stalin, and when the tracks come to an end, he orders that the ones over which the train has already passed be dismantled and laid down before the locomotive. Brezhnev takes Khrushchev’s place. When the tracks end again, Brezhnev decides to pull down the window blinds and rock the cars in such a way that the passengers will think the train is still moving forward. (Yurii Boriev, Staliniad, 1990)”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“There is a lot of warmth in an old cognac, a lot of sun. It will go to one’s head calmly, without hurry.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Biel często kojarzy się z ostatecznością, z kresem, ze śmiercią. W tych kulturach, w których ludzie żyją lękiem przed śmiercią żałobnicy ubierają się na czarno, żeby odstraszyć od siebie śmierć, izolować ją, ograniczyć do zmarłego. Tam jednak, gdzie śmierć jest uważana za inną formę, inną postać istnienia, żałobnicy ubierają się na biało i na biało ubierają zmarłego: biel jest tu kolorem akceptacji, zgody, przystania na los.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“I thought about the terrible uselessness of suffering. Love leaves behind its creation-the next generation coming into the world; the continuation of humanity. But suffering? Such a great part of human experience, the most difficult and painful, passes leaving no trace. If one were to collect the energy of suffering emitted by the millions of people here [Magadan, Russia] and transform it into the power of creation, one could turn our planet into a flowering garden. But what would remain?

Rusty carcasses of ships, rotting watchtowers, deep holes which some kind of ore was once extracted. A dismal, lifeless emptiness. Not a soul anywhere, for the exhausted columns have already passed and vanished in the cold eternal fog.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Stalin ordered a road built between Yakutsk and Magadan. Two thousand kilometers across the taiga and the permafrost. They started building it simultaneously from both ends. Summer came, thaws, the permafrost melted, water underran the soil, turned the road into a quagmire, it drowned. Together with the road drowned the prisoners who worked on it. Stalin ordered the work to start anew. But it ended up the same way. Once again, he commanded. The two ends of the road never met, but their builders perhaps met in heaven.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“After seventy-three years of bolshevism, people do not know what freedom of thought is, and so in its place they practice freedom of action. And here freedom of action means freedom to kill. And there’s perestroika for you, the new thinking.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“The political stage revolves many times faster than the stage of our daily existence. Regimes change, governing parties and their leaders change, but man lives just as he previously had—he still does not have an apartment or a job; the houses are still shabby, and there are potholes in the roads; the arduous task of making ends meet still goes on from dawn to dusk.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“The Western democrat and the Moscow democrat are possessed of two entirely different mindsets. The mind of the Western democrat roams freely among the problems of the contemporary world, reflects upon how to live well and happily, how modern technology might serve man better, and how to ensure that each one of us produces more and more material goods and attains greater and greater spiritual well-being. Yet these are all matters beyond the Moscow democrat’s field of vision. Only one thing interests him: how to defeat communism. On this subject he can discourse with energy and passion for hours, concoct schemes, present proposals and plans, unaware that as he does so he becomes for a second time communism’s victim: the first time he was a victim by force, imprisoned by the system, and now he has become a victim voluntarily, for he has allowed himself to be imprisoned in the web of communism’s problems. For such is the demonic nature of great evil—that without our knowledge and consent, it manages to blind us and force us into its straitjacket.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Will not mankind, which was born in the desert, as all the sources attest, have to return there to its cradle? And then to whom will he turn for advice, this sweaty urbanite, with his broken-down Fiat, with his refrigerator and no place to plug it in? Will he not start searching for the Turkman with the gray beard, the Tuareg wrapped in a turban? They know where the wells are, which means that they know the secret of survival and salvation. Their knowledge, devoid of scholasticism and doctrinairism, is great, because it serves life. In Europe they have the habit of writing that people of the desert are backward, even extremely backward. And it doesn’t occur to anyone that this is no way to judge a people who have been able to survive millennia under the most dire conditions, producing a culture that is most valuable because it is practical, a culture that allowed entire nations to exist and develop while during that very same time many sedentary civilizations fell and disappeared forever from the face of the earth.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Gradually, the nations living in this cradle of mankind, having created great, monumental civilizations, as if exhausted by the superhuman effort, or perhaps even crushed by the immensity of what they had brought forth and no longer capable of further developing it, handed over the reins to younger peoples, bursting with energy and eager to live. Europe will come on the scene and, later, America.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“The paradox lies in the fact that even if I do not want to be a colonizer, and have even protested against colonialism, I am a colonizer by the mere fact of membership in the nation that colonizes others. Only at the price of renouncing my own country and nation, and perhaps at the price of changing my skin color (a theoretical proposition), could I rid myself of this taint, this odium.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“How many victims, how much blood and suffering, are connected with this business of borders! There is no end to the cemeteries of those who have been killed the world over in the defense of borders. Equally boundless are the cemeteries of the audacious who attempted to expand their borders. It is safe to assume that half of those who have ever walked upon our planet and lost their lives in the field of glory gave up the ghost in battles begun over a question of borders.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“And it is this kasha that is going to be at issue now. For clearly kasha belongs, beside books, among the products most under suspicion. Apparently there is something in kasha, some sort of ambiguity, some sort of perverse, insidious quality, some sort of deceitfulness, some sort of two-facedness; for yes, this seems to be kasha, but after all it can turn out that this is not completely kasha, that this is kasha, but not one hundred percent. That is why the customs officers are pouring all the kasha out onto the table. The table is beginning to turn gold and brown; it looks like a scale model of the Sahara spread out before them. The sifting of the kasha begins. A careful, meticulous sifting through the fingers. The fingers of the customs inspectors allow narrow little streams of kasha to pass through them, sifting, sifting, but suddenly—stop! The fingers stop and become motionless. The fingers have felt a strange grain. They felt it; they sent a signal to the customs inspector’s brain; the brain responded—stop! The fingers stand still and are waiting. The brain says, Try one more time, cautiously and carefully. The fingers, delicately and imperceptibly, delicately and imperceptibly, but very carefully, very vigilantly, roll the grain about. They investigate. The experienced fingers of a Soviet customs inspector. Skilled, ready to throttle the grain instantly, catch it in a trap, imprison it. But the little grain is simply what it is—meaning, an ordinary little grain of ordinary kasha, and what has singled it out from the million other grains strewn on the table in the border station in Zabaykal’sk is an uncommon, strange shape, the result of some sort of roughness in the millstone, which turned out to be warped, uneven. So, not contraband, not a trick, concludes the customs inspector’s brain, but it doesn’t give up yet. On the contrary, it commands the fingers to keep on sifting, keep on examining, keep on feeling, and even at the shadow of a doubt to stop—immediately!”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Pomislil sem na strašno nekoristnost trpljenja. Ljubezen pušča za seboj svoje sadove - to so naslednji rodovi, ki prihajajo na svet, to je nadaljevanje človeštva. A trpljenje? Tako velik del človekovih izkušenj, bolečih in najhujših, mine brez sledov. Če bi izbrali energijo trpljenja, ki so jo tu oddajali milijoni ljudi, in jo spremenili v ustvarjalno silo, bi lahko iz našeg planeta naredili cvetoč vrt.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Nobenega dvoma ni, da ima vprašano človek tistega, ki sprašuje, povsem upravičeno za bedaka. Vse zivljenjske izkušnje ga namreč učijo, da od zastavljanja vprašanj ni nobene koristi, da bo človek izvedel le toliko, kolikor mu bodo - brez spraševanj - povedali (ali še raje: ne bodo povedali), in da je prej nasprotno - spraševanje je zelo nevarno, ker lahko človek, ki postavlja vprašanja, nase prikliče veliko nesrečo.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Por supuesto, resulta espantosa e insoportablemente aburrida esta inactividad tan absoluta, este quedarse sentado sin hacer nada en un estado de postración mental, pero, por otro lado, ¿acaso no pasan el tiempo de esa manera tan pasiva y apática millones y millones de gentes del planeta? Y además, ¿no lo hacen así desde hace años, desde haces siglos, independientemente de la religión, de la cultura, de la raza?

Basta con que, en América del Sur, vayamos a los Andes o nos paseemos en coche por las polvorientas calles de Piura o naveguemos por el Orinoco: en todas partes encontramos aldeas de barro, poblados y villas pobres y veremos cuánta gente permanece sentada en la puerta de su casa, sobre piedras o en bancos, inmóvil, sin hacer nada. Vayamos de América del Sur a África, visitemos los solitarios oasis del Sáhara o los poblados de pescadores negros que se extienden a lo largo del Golfo de Guinea, visitemos a los misteriosos pigmeos en la jungla del Congo, la diminuta ciudad de Mwenzo en Zambia, la hermosa y dotada tribu Dinka en Sudán: en todas partes veremos gentes sentadas que de vez en cuando articularán alguna palabra, que por la noche se calentarán alrededor de un fuego, pero que en realidad, aparte de permanecer sentadas, inmóviles e inactivas, no hacen nada en absoluto y se encuentran (podemos suponer) en un estado de postración mental. ¿Acaso Asia es diferente? ¿Acaso, yendo de Karachi a Lahore o de Bombay a Madrás o de Yakarta a Malangu, no nos chocará ver que miles, qué digo, millones de paquistaníes, hindúes, indonesios y otros asiáticos están sentados inmóviles con la vista fija en no se sabe qué? Cojamos un vuelo a las Filipinas o a Samoa, visitemos las inconmensurables extensiones del Yukón o la exótica Jamaica: en todas partes veremos el mismo panorama de gentes sentadas que permanecen inmóviles durante horas enteras en unas sillas viejas, en unos tablones de madera, en unas cajas de plástico, a la sombra de olmos y mangos, apoyadas contras las paredes de las chabolas, las vallas y los marcos de las ventanas, independientemente de la hora del día y de la estación del año, de si hace solo o llueve, gentes aturdidas e indefinidas, gentes en un estado de somnolencia crónica, que no hacen nada excepto permanecer allí sin necesidad y sin objetivo, y también sumidas (podemos suponer) en una postración mental.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Над світом нависли три хвороби, три пошесті.
Перша — хвороба націоналізму.
Друга — хвороба расизму.
Третя — хвороба релігійного фундаменталізму.
У цих трьох хвороб є одна спільна риса, спільний знаменник — агресивна, всевладна, тотальна ірраціональність.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Three plagues, three contagions, threaten the world.

The first is the plague of nationalism.

The second is the plague of racism.

The third is the plague of religious fundamentalism.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“The problem is that the consciousness of the contemporary Russian is torn by an irreconcilable contradiction. It is the contradiction between the criterion of blood and the criterion of land. What should one strive for? According to the criterion of blood, the point is to maintain the ethnic purity of the Russian nation. But such an ethnically pure Russia is only part of today’s Imperium. And what about the rest? According to the criterion of land, the point is to maintain the full extent of the Imperium. But then there can be no hope of maintaining the ethnic purity of the Russians.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“For Genady Nikolayevich, the border between the camp and the world beyond the camp is not very distinct. It is not the border between slavery and freedom, just a matter of degrees of captivity. It is said that he arrived in Vorkuta voluntarily. Voluntarily? He arrived because he was chased out of his home by the whip of hunger! It is also said that he could leave this place at any time. Leave? And go where? And where would he live? What would he live on? Genady Nikolayevich is rather inclined toward the opinion of Ivan Solonievich, one of the few inmates who in 1934 succeeded in escaping to the West: all of Russia is a camp.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“I had just read a new book, published in early 1989, by the eminent historian Natan Eydelman, Revolution from the Top in Russia. The author regards perestroika as just one more in a series of turning points in Russian history and reminds us that all such turning points, revolutions, convulsions, and breakthroughs in this country came about because they were the will of the czar, the will of the secretary-general, or the will of the Kremlin (or of Petersburg). The energy of the Russian nation, says Eydelman, has always been spent not on independent grass-roots initiatives, but on carrying out the will of the ruling elite.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Man finds himself in a much more dramatic situation in these climes than does his brother living in a temperate zone, and for this reason the causes of wars are deeper here and, one would like to say, more humane than in Europe, where history records wars started over such petty affairs as lèse-majesté, a dynastic feud, or a ruler’s persecution mania. In the desert the cause of war is the desire to live, man is born already entangled in that contradiction, and therein lies the drama. That is why Turkmen never knew unity; the empty aryk divided them.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“While still at university I read Bierdayev’s old book in which he reflected upon how the great expanses of the Imperium had influenced the Russian soul. What does a Russian think about, somewhere on the shore of the Yenisey, or deep in the Amur taiga? Every road that he takes seems to have no end. He can walk along it for days and months, and always Russia will surround him. The plains have no end, nor the forests, nor the rivers. To rule over such boundless expanses, says Bierdayev, one had to create a boundless state. And behold, the Russian fell into a contradiction—to maintain the great expanses, the Russian must maintain a great state; on the maintenance of this great state he expends his energy, of which not enough remains for anything else—for organization, for husbandry, and so on. He expends his energy on a state that then enthralls and oppresses him.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“Whiteness is often associated with finality, with the end, with death. In those cultures in which people live with the fear of death, mourners dress in black, to scare death away from themselves, isolate it, confine it to the deceased. But here, where death is regarded as another form, another shape of existence, mourners dress in white and dress the deceased in white: whiteness is here the color of acceptance, consent, of a surrender to fate.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium

“There is something in this January Siberian landscape that overpowers, oppresses, stuns. Above all, it is its enormity, its boundlessness, its oceanic limitlessness. The earth has no end here; the world has no end. Man is no created for such measureless. For him a comfortable, palpable, serviceable measure is the measure of his village, his field, street, house. At sea, the size of the ship's deck will be such a measure. Man is created for the kind of space that he can traverse at one try, with a single effort.”
― Ryszard Kapuściński, Imperium