Negative statements about Russians.
Spring
The Russian people truly have freedom of spirit, which is given only to those who are not too absorbed in the thirst for earthly profit and earthly prosperity. Russia is a country of everyday freedom, unknown to the advanced peoples of the West, enslaved by petty-bourgeois norms. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
The Russian man, although extremely attractive in many respects, is unable to settle on anything specific. Therefore, he has always been and, I think, will always be a victim of one or another bureaucracy. John Galsworthy
You don’t need to be Russian: you just need to think in order to read with curiosity the traditions of the people who, with courage and courage, gained dominance over a ninth part of the world, discovered countries hitherto unknown to anyone, introducing them into the general system of Geography and History. Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamzin
Imperialism in the Western and bourgeois sense of the word is alien to the Russian people, but they dutifully devoted their energies to the creation of imperialism, in which their hearts were not interested. Here lies the secret of Russian history and the Russian soul. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
The Russian people are the most apolitical people who have never been able to organize their land. All truly Russian, national writers, thinkers, publicists - all were stateless, a kind of anarchists. Anarchism is a phenomenon of the Russian spirit; it was inherent in different ways to both our extreme left and our extreme right. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev For Russian material values
and the principles behind them mean too little, and the feelings and expression of them mean too much. John Galsworthy
The Russian intelligentsia has always treated nationalism with disgust and abhorred it as if it were evil spirits. She professed exclusively supranational ideals. And no matter how superficial, no matter how banal the cosmopolitan doctrines of the intelligentsia were, they still reflected, albeit distortedly, the supranational, all-human spirit of the Russian people. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
Russians have always been underestimated, and yet they know how to keep secrets not only from their enemies, but also from their friends. Winston Churchill
Russians take a long time to harness, but drive quickly. Otto von Bismarck
The Russian people seem to enjoy their suffering. Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky
At the heart of Russian history is a significant legend about the calling of foreign Varangians to rule the Russian land, since “our land is great and abundant, but there is no order in it.” How characteristic this is of the fatal inability and unwillingness of the Russian people to establish order in their own land! The Russian people seem to want not so much a free state, freedom in the state, as freedom from the state, freedom from worries about the earthly order. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
Our love must always be stronger than our hatred. You need to love Russia and the Russian people more than you hate the revolution and the Bolsheviks. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
State power has always been an external, not an internal principle for the stateless Russian people; she was not created from him, but came as if from outside, like a groom comes to his bride. And that is why so often the power gave the impression of being foreign, of some kind of German rule. Russian radicals and Russian conservatives alike thought that the state was “they” and not “us.” Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
The Russians admire nothing more than strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than military weakness. Winston Churchill
The Russian character, if one can speak of it as something unified in a country inhabited by many peoples, is practically indifferent to the value of time and place; the main thing for him is feelings, and even more, perhaps, is the expression of feelings, so he does not have time to achieve his goals before new waves of feelings wash them away. John Galsworthy
The Russian people are in highest degree a polarized people, that is, a combination of opposites. You can be fascinated and disappointed by him, you can always expect surprises from him, he is extremely capable of inspiring strong love and intense hatred. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
Russia is the most non-chauvinistic country in the world. In our country, nationalism always gives the impression of something non-Russian, superficial, some kind of nonsense. The Germans, British, and French are chauvinists and nationalists en masse; they are full of national self-confidence and complacency. Russians are almost ashamed of being Russian; National pride is alien to them and often even - alas! - national dignity is alien. The Russian people are not at all characterized by aggressive nationalism or inclinations for forced Russification. The Russian does not put forward, does not show off, does not despise others. In the Russian element there truly is some kind of national unselfishness, sacrifice, unknown Western peoples. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
There is a correspondence between the immensity, boundlessness, infinity of the Russian land and the Russian soul, between physical geography and spiritual geography. In the soul of the Russian people there is the same immensity, boundlessness, aspiration to infinity, as in the Russian plain. Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
A Russian person cannot be happy alone; he needs the participation of others, and without this he will not be happy. Vladimir Ivanovich Dal
It seems to me that we have begun to forget how to talk about Russia. Over the past 25 years, we have become accustomed to listening to Alfred Koch, who called Russia a useless, bankrupt country, and Tatyana Tolstaya, who referred to Russia only as an “inert, fat-assed fool.”
However - here is a paradox - people who left a significant mark on the history of Russia spoke completely different words about our country. I present to your attention new article on Ruxpert, “quotes about Russia”:
Statements by Russians
Alexander III
Russia has no friends, they are afraid of our enormity... Russia has only two reliable allies - its army and its navy. (link)
Nikolay Berdyaev
The Russian people created the most powerful state in the world, the greatest empire. Russia has consistently and persistently gathered from Ivan Kalita and reached dimensions that stun the imagination of all peoples of the world. (link)
Nikolay Gogol
Thank God first of all for the fact that you are Russian. For the Russian this path is now opening, and this path is Russia itself. If only a Russian loves Russia, he will love everything that is in Russia. God himself is now leading us to this love. (link)
You don’t yet love Russia: you only know how to be sad and irritated by rumors about everything bad that happens in it, all this produces in you only callous annoyance and despondency. No, this is not love yet, you are far from love, this is perhaps just one too distant harbinger of it.()No, if you really love Russia, then by itself that short-sighted thought that has now arisen in many honest and even very honest people will disappear from you. smart people, that is, as if at the present time they can no longer do anything for Russia and as if she no longer needs them at all; on the contrary, only then will you feel with all your strength that love is omnipotent and that you can do anything with it. (link)
Eh, three! bird three, who invented you? You know, you could only have been born among a lively people, in that land that does not like to joke, but has spread out smoothly across half the world, and go ahead and count the miles until it hits your eyes. (link)
If there is only one Russian farm left, then Russia will be reborn. (link)
Are there really such fires, such torments and such strength in the world that would overpower the Russian force! (link)
Anton Denikin
A Russian is not the one who bears a Russian surname, but the one who loves Russia and considers it his fatherland. (link)
Fedor Dostoevsky
In order to judge the moral strength of a people and what they are capable of in the future, one must take into account not the degree of ugliness to which they can temporarily, and even for the most part, humiliate themselves, but one must take into account only the height of the spirit , to which he can rise when the time comes. For ugliness is a temporary misfortune, always almost dependent on the circumstances preceding and passing, from slavery, from centuries-old oppression, from callousness, and the gift of generosity is an eternal gift, a spontaneous gift, born along with the people and all the more honored if and throughout the centuries slavery, hardship and poverty, he will still survive intact, in the heart of this people. (link)
The purpose of the Russian person is undoubtedly pan-European and worldwide. To become a real Russian, to become completely Russian, perhaps, means only - to become the brother of all people, an all-man, if you want. (link)
Catherine II
The Russian people are a special people in the world, distinguished by insight, intelligence, and strength. (link)
Strength alone strengthens independence. Only if you are ready to fight can you inspire respect for yourself and find allies instead of patrons. (link)
Mikhail Lomonosov
The greatness, power and wealth of the entire state lies in the preservation and proliferation of the Russian people. (link)
Christopher Minich
The Russian state has the advantage over others that it is controlled directly by God himself, otherwise it is impossible to understand how it exists. (link)
Konstantin Paustovsky
Many Russian words themselves radiate poetry, just as gems emit a mysterious shine.(link)
Vladimir Putin
Alexander Pushkin
It is not only possible, but also necessary, to be proud of the glory of your ancestors; not to respect it is shameful cowardice. (link)
Konstantin Simonov
Russians are a stubborn people, and if it once occurred to them good idea, sooner or later they will implement it on a truly Russian scale! (link)
Pyotr Stolypin
You, gentlemen, need great upheavals; we need a great Russia. (link)
Alexander Suvorov
He who loves his Fatherland gives best example love for humanity. (link)
Nature produced only one Russia. She has no rivals. We are Russians, we will overcome everything. (link)
The fortress is strong, the garrison is a whole army. But nothing can stand against Russian weapons - we are strong and self-confident. (link)
The Russian is distinguished by faith, loyalty and reason. All of Europe will move towards Russia in vain: it will find Thermopylae, Leonidas and its coffin there. (link)
We are Russians! What a delight!
Where a deer passes, a Russian soldier will also pass. Where the deer won't pass, it's all the same Russian will pass soldier.(link)
Ivan Turgenev
Russia can do without each of us, but none of us can do without it. (link)
Take care of the purity of your language as a sacred thing! Never use foreign words. The Russian language is so rich and flexible that we have nothing to take from those who are poorer than us. (link)
Statements by foreigners
Otto von Bismarck
Don't expect that once you take advantage of Russia's weakness, you will receive dividends forever. Russians always come for their money. And when they come, do not rely on the Jesuit agreements you signed, which supposedly justify you. They are not worth the paper they are written on. Therefore, you should either play fairly with the Russians, or not play at all. (link)
Even the most favorable outcome of the war will never lead to the disintegration of the main strength of Russia, which is based on millions of Russians... These latter, even if they are dismembered by international treatises, are just as quickly reconnected with each other, like particles of a cut piece of mercury... (link)
Charles de Gaulle
Russian people will never be happy knowing that injustice is happening somewhere. (link)
Dalai Lama
Alexandr Duma
Russian people work tirelessly to transform themselves and those around them from humanity to humanity! (link)
Carl Clausewitz
Russia is not a country that can really be conquered, that is, occupied; at least this cannot be done... by the forces of modern European states... Such a country can only be defeated by internal weakness and the effects of internal strife. (link)
Friedrich Nietzsche
The strongest and most surprising manifestation of willpower is in the vast middle kingdom, where Europe seems to be returning to Asia - Russia. There the power to want has long been postponed and accumulated, there the will waits - it is unknown, the will of denial or the will of affirmation - it waits in a threatening way so that, according to the favorite expression of modern physicists, it is freed. (link)
For any institutions to arise, there must be a will that motivates instinct, anti-liberal to the point of brightness - the will to tradition, to authority, to responsibility for entire centuries, to the solidarity of past and future generations... (link)If this will is present, then something like the Roman Empire arises, or like Russia - the only country that currently has a future... (link)
Russia is the opposite of the pitiful nervousness of small European states, for which, with the founding of the “German Empire,” critical time. (link)
Theodore Roosevelt
I foresee a tremendous future for Russia. Of course, she too will have to go through certain shocks and, perhaps, severe shocks, but all this will pass, and after that Russia will rise up and become the stronghold of all of Europe, perhaps the most powerful power in the whole world. (link)
Adam Smith
For the sake of a righteous idea, Russian people work with joy, even while in prison, and then they do not feel like prisoners - they gain freedom. (link)
Albert Schweitzer
Russian people do not need the materialistic “values” of the West, they do not need the dubious achievements of the East in the sphere of abstract spirituality, which has nothing to do with reality. (link)
PS. Quotes from our liberals - about Russia, about Russians, about patriots and about oppositionists, are here.
We remember the brightest and famous quotes, thoughts, aphorisms outstanding people about Russia and its people.
Alexander III the Peacemaker - Emperor of All Russia, Tsar of Poland and Grand Duke Finnish (1845-1894).
In the whole world we have only two true allies - our army and navy. All the rest, at the first opportunity, will take up arms against us.
When the Russian Tsar fishes, Europe can wait.
Russia - for Russians and in Russian.
Nikolay Berdyaev - Great Russian philosopher (1874-1948)
The Russian people created the most powerful state in the world, the greatest empire. Russia has consistently and persistently gathered from Ivan Kalita and reached dimensions that stun the imagination of all peoples of the world.
Without initial and spontaneous love for Russia, no creative work is possible. historical path. Our love for Russia, like any love, is arbitrary, it is not love for qualities and virtues, but this love should be a source of creative creation of the qualities and virtues of Russia. There must be love for one's people creative love, creative instinct. And least of all it means enmity and hatred towards other peoples. The path to pan-humanity for each of us lies through Russia.
Endlessly difficult task The Russian people faced the task of formalizing and organizing their vast land. The immensity of the Russian land, the absence of borders and limits are expressed in the structure of the Russian soul. The landscape of the Russian soul corresponds to the landscape of the Russian land: the same boundlessness, formlessness, aspiration to infinity, breadth.
Nikolay Gogol - Great Russian writer and playwright (1809-1852).
Thank God first of all for the fact that you are Russian. For the Russian this path is now opening, and this path is Russia itself. If only a Russian loves Russia, he will love everything that is in Russia. God himself is now leading us to this love.
You don’t yet love Russia: you only know how to be sad and irritated by rumors about everything bad that happens in it, all this produces in you only callous annoyance and despondency. No, this is not love yet, you are far from love, this is perhaps just one too distant harbinger of it.
If there is only one Russian farm left, then Russia will be reborn.
Anton Denikin - Front Commander, General Staff Lieutenant General; later Acting Supreme Ruler of Russia on the part of the White Movement (1872-1947).
A Russian is not the one who bears a Russian surname, but the one who loves Russia and considers it his fatherland.
When peace rests over our poor country, and the all-healing time turns the bloody reality into the distant past, the Russian people will remember those who were the first to rise to defend Russia from the red scourge.
This is Russian, for Russians. When Russia is free, I will give everything to her.
Fedor Dostoevsky - Great Russian writer (1821-1881).
Is it really possible that even here they will not and will not allow the Russian organism to develop nationally, with its organic strength, and certainly impersonally, servilely imitating Europe? But what should one do with the Russian organism then? Do these gentlemen understand what an organism is? Separation, “detachment” from their country leads to hatred, these people hate Russia, so to speak, naturally, physically: for the climate, for the fields, for the forests, for the order, for the liberation of the peasant, for Russian history, in a word, for everything, They hate me for everything.
The purpose of the Russian person is, undoubtedly, pan-European and worldwide. To become a real Russian, to become completely Russian, perhaps, means only - to become the brother of all people, an all-man, if you want. Our destiny is universality, and not acquired by the sword, but by the power of brotherhood and our fraternal desire for the reunification of people.
The highest and most characteristic of our people is a sense of justice and a thirst for it.
Mikhail Lomonosov - World-famous encyclopedist scientist, rector of the Academic University, academician of the Imperial Academy of Sciences and Arts in St. Petersburg (1711-1765).
The greatness, power and wealth of the entire state lies in the preservation and proliferation of the Russian people.
The beauty, greatness, strength and richness of the Russian language are abundantly clear from books written in past centuries, when our ancestors not only did not know any rules for writing, but they hardly even thought that they existed or could exist.
For the common good, and especially for the establishment of sciences in the fatherland, and against my own father for sin I do not set myself up to rebel... I dedicated myself to this, so that until my grave I could fight the enemies of Russian sciences, as I have been fighting for twenty years, I would stand for them from a young age, I won’t leave in my old age.
Fyodor Tyutchev - Great Russian poet and diplomat (1803-1873).
You can’t understand Russia with your mind, you can’t measure it with a common yardstick: It has become something special - You can only believe in Russia.
If you meet a veteran of the Napoleonic army, remind him of his glorious past and ask who, among all the opponents who fought with him on the battlefields of Europe, was most worthy of respect, who, after individual defeats, maintained a proud appearance: you can bet ten to one what he will name a Russian soldier for you. Walk through the departments of France where the foreign invasion left its mark in 1814, and ask the inhabitants of these provinces which soldier in the detachments of the enemy troops consistently showed the greatest humanity, the highest discipline, the least hostility towards civilians, unarmed citizens - you can bet a hundred to one that they will name you a Russian soldier. And if you want to know who was the most unbridled and the most predatory - oh, it’s not a Russian soldier anymore.
Peter I the Great - The last Tsar of All Rus' and the first All-Russian Emperor (1672-1725).
I have a presentiment that the Russians will someday, and perhaps during our lifetime, shame the most enlightened peoples with their success in science, tirelessness in their work and the majesty of their firm and loud glory.
A Russian is one who loves and serves Russia!
Alexander Pushkin - Great Russian poet (1799-1837)
Disrespect for ancestors is the first sign of savagery and immorality. It is not only possible, but also necessary, to be proud of the glory of your ancestors; not to respect it is shameful cowardice.
I am far from admiring everything that I see around me;... but I swear on my honor that for nothing in the world I would not want to change my fatherland or have a different history other than the history of our ancestors, the way God gave it to us.
Alexander Suvorov - Great Russian commander (1730-1800).
He who loves his Fatherland sets the best example of love for humanity.
Nature produced only one Russia. She has no rivals. We are Russians, we will overcome everything.
The fortress is strong, the garrison is a whole army. But nothing can stand against Russian weapons - we are strong and confident.
The Russian is distinguished by faith, loyalty and reason. All of Europe will move towards Russia in vain: it will find Thermopylae, Leonidas and its own coffin there.
Preamble:I hope you already know about the Kadyrov Bridge in St. Petersburg?
and now the plot:
Before you continue reading, I will say that I am not forcing things, I am not a Russophobe, not an agent of the State Department, the post is not paid for. This is history. There's no escape from it.
“It [Russia] is a terrible spectacle of a country where people trade in people, without even having the justification that American planters slyly use, claiming that the Negro is not a person; countries where people call themselves not by names, but by nicknames: Vanka, Steshka, Vaska, Palashka; a country where, finally, there are not only no guarantees for personality, honor and property, but there is not even police order, but there are only huge corporations of various official thieves and robbers" . -
- V. G. Belinsky, literary critic(1811 - 1848)
“Heavy Russian spirit, you can’t breathe and you can’t fly.” - A. Blok
“Muscovy is the Rus' of the taiga, Mongolian, wild, bestial.” (Muscovy - the Russia of taiga, Mongolic, wild, bestial.) - Alexey Tolstoy
"Not the people, but brute, boor, a wild horde, murderers and villains." (They are not people, they are boors, villains, wild hordes of murderers and miscreants.) - Michael Bulgakov
“The most important sign of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic cruelty.” (The most important trait of the success of the Russian people is their sadistic brutality.) - Maksim Gorky
“The Russian is the greatest and most insolent liar in the whole world.” (A Russian is the greatest and the cheekiest of all liars in the world.) - IvanTurgenev
“A people who wander around Europe and look for what they can destroy, destroy just for fun.” (People who roam across Europe in search of what to destroy and obliterate, only for the for the sake of gratification.)- Fedor Dostoevsky
"The Russian people are boorish." -
Mikhail Bulgakov, 1923
"The Russian people have not a hint of Creative skills". - G. Uspensky.
“Russians are a people who hate freedom, deify slavery, love shackles on their hands and feet, love their bloody despots, do not feel any beauty, are dirty physically and morally, have lived for centuries in darkness, obscurantism, and have not lifted a finger towards anything. human, but always ready to captivate, to oppress everyone and everything, the whole world. This is not a people, but a historical curse of humanity." - I.S. Shmelev.
“Oh, how hard, how unbearably hard it is sometimes to live in Russia, in this stinking environment of dirt, vulgarity, lies, deceptions, abuses, good little scoundrels, hospitable bribe-takers, hospitable rogues - the fathers and benefactors of bribe-takers!” - Ivan Aksakov, from a letter to his family.
“In the soul of every Russian, unlike a European, lives a cunning, evil animal.” - Carl Gustav Jung in an interview.
“I must express my sad view of the Russian man - he has such a weak brain system that he is unable to perceive reality as such. For him there are only words. His conditioned reflexes are coordinated not with actions, but with words.” - Academician Pavlov. About the Russian mind. 1932
“A people that hates freedom, loves slavery, loves chains on their hands and feet, dirty physically and morally... ready at any moment to oppress anyone and everyone.” (The people who hate freedom, adore enslavement, love handcuffs and who are filthy morally and physically, ready to oppress everyone and everything.) - Ivan Shmelev
“A people indifferent to the least responsibility, to the least justice, to the least truth, a people who do not recognize human dignity, which does not fully recognize either free man, no free thought." (The people who are indifferent to the least of obligations, to the least of fairness, to the least of truth... the people who do not recognize human dignity, who entirely defy a free man and a free thought.) - Alexander Pushkin
We have five thousand miles from thought to thought. - Peter Vyazemsky
“Russia is the most vile, sickeningly disgusting country in the entire history of the world. Using the method of selection, monstrous moral monsters were bred there, in whom the very concept of Good and Evil was turned inside out. Throughout its history, this nation has been wallowing in shit and at the same time wants to drown the whole world in it...” - I.A. Ilyin (1882-1954), Russian philosopher
“... The measure of devotion to the Motherland is in informing the special services.”
“...The measure of groveling before power is the measure of devotion to the country.”
- I.A. Ilyin, Russian philosopher, from the article « Soviet Union- not Russia", 1947
“I am not proud that I am Russian, I submit to this position. And when I think... about the beauty of our history before the damned Mongols and before the damned Moscow, even more shameful than the Mongols themselves, I want to throw myself on the ground and roll in despair at what we have done...” - Tolstoy A.K. From a letter to friend B. M. Markevich April 26, 1869. Collected works in 4 volumes. T. 4. - M., 1964
"The Russian people are in an extremely sad state: they are sick, ruined, demoralized." “And so we learn that he, in the person of a significant part of his intelligentsia, although he cannot be considered formally insane, is nevertheless obsessed with false ideas bordering on delusions of grandeur and the delusion of enmity of everyone towards him. Indifferent to his real benefit and real harm, he imagines non-existent dangers and bases the most absurd assumptions on them. It seems to him that all his neighbors offend him, do not worship his greatness enough and are plotting against him in every possible way, he accuses each of his family of trying to harm him, to separate from him and go over to his enemies. , and he considers all his neighbors to be his enemies..." - Philosopher Vladimir Solovyov
God of the hungry, God of the cold,
Beggars far and wide,
God of unprofitable estates
Here it is, here it is, the Russian god.
God of breasts and... saggy
God of bast shoes and plump legs,
Bitter faces and sour cream,
Here it is, here it is, the Russian god.
P.A. Vyazemsky
Russian character is a constant ebb and flow, and the purely Russian word “Nothing!” expresses well the fatalism of these endless fluctuations. - D. Galsworthy
The Russian man has an enemy, irreconcilable, dangerous enemy, without which he would have been a giant. This enemy is laziness. - N. Gogol
“Not the people, but a hellish freak.”- V. Rozanov is a Russian philosopher, publicist and critic.
"The treaty signed with Russia is not worth the paper it is written on." -- Otto von Bismarck
“The main feature of the Russian national character is cruelty, and that cruelty is sadistic. I’m not talking about individual outbursts of cruelty, but about the psyche, about the soul of the people. I looked through the archives of one court for 1901-1910. and I was overcome with horror huge amount incredibly cruel treatment of people. In general, here in Russia everyone takes pleasure in beating someone. And the people consider beatings to be useful, so they made up the saying “for a beaten person they give two unbeaten ones.” For 1917-1919 the peasants buried the captured Red Guards upside down so deep that their feet stuck out of the ground. Then they laughed as those legs twitched. Or they nailed one arm and one leg high on a tree and enjoyed the torment of the victim. The Red Guards tore the skin from living captive Denikin counter-revolutionaries, hammered nails into their heads, and cut out the skin on their shoulders, like officer’s shoulder straps.” - Gorky Maxim. About the Russian peasantry (1922)
“The Russian man has selfless love to meanness. He won’t have anything to gain from this, but he will do something nasty to his neighbor.” - N.V. Gogol
Alas, this beast was... His Majesty the Russian people... - Shulgin V.V. Days; 1920. - M., 1989, p. 182(1878-1976), publicist, one of the leaders of the right in the State Duma
If Russia had failed, there would have been no loss or unrest in humanity. -- Ivan Turgenev
“There is no smaller, bastard and rude individual in this world than the Katsap. Born in a Nazi country, fed by the propaganda of Nazism, this bastard will never become a Human. His country has no friends - either lackeys or enemies. His country is only capable of threatening, humiliate and kill. And for maintaining this status of Russia, an ordinary Katsap is ready to sacrifice his own life, the lives of his parents and children, and his quality of life. own people. Truly: Katsaps are beasts. Fierce, bloodthirsty, but... mortal." - A. Solzhenitsyn
“It seems that Poletika said: In Russia there is salvation from bad measures taken by the government: bad execution.” - Peter Vyazemsky
A Russian person cannot be happy alone, he needs the participation of others, and without this he will not be happy. - Vladimir Dal
In all countries railways They are used for transportation, and in our case, they are also used for theft. - Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
“The Russian mind shows itself most clearly in stupidity.” -- Vasily Klyuchevsky
There are no average talents in Russia, simple craftsmen, but there are lonely geniuses and millions of worthless people. Geniuses can do nothing because they have no apprentices, and nothing can be done with millions because they have no masters. The first are useless because there are too few of them; the latter are helpless because there are too many of them. - Vasily Klyuchevsky
The Russian commoner - the Orthodox - serves his faith as a church duty imposed on him to save someone’s soul, just not his own, which he has not learned to save, and does not want to. No matter how you pray, the devil will get it all. This is his whole theology. - Vasily Klyuchevsky
You can revere people who believed in Russia, but not the object of their belief. - Vasily Klyuchevsky
The Russian clergy has always taught their flock not to know and love God, but only to fear the devils, which they also bred with their priests. - Vasily Klyuchevsky
The Russian government, as a reverse providence, arranges for the better not the future, but the past. - Alexander Herzen
There are no roads in Russia - only directions. - Napoleon I
Nothing is impossible in Russia except reforms. - Oscar Wilde
“The Russian woman, by the very nature of her upbringing and life, too easily puts up with the fate of a hanger-on...”
“If I fall asleep and wake up in a hundred years and they ask me what is happening in Russia now, I will answer: they drink and steal...”
“The severity of Russian laws is mitigated by the optionality of their implementation.”
“The worst laws are in Russia, but this shortcoming is compensated by the fact that no one implements them.”
“The Russian government must keep its people in a constant state of amazement.”
“We have no middle ground: either the snout or the hand!”
Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin
“Scattering! Destroyed spiritual desert!”
“There are too many famous thieves. There are too few famous heroes."
- Nikolay Kolychev
“Never fight the Russians. They will respond to your every military stratagem with unpredictable stupidity.” - OTTO von BISMARCK
It is not difficult to govern Russia, but it is completely useless. - Emperor Alexander II
"You can't understand Russia with your mind..." — Fyodor Tyutchev, Russian poet.
Russian History before Peter the Great is one memorial service, and after Peter the Great - one criminal case. - F. Tyutchev
“To lie to a Russian is to blow your nose. Their lies come from their slavish essence. A people who have never known or told the truth are a people of spiritual and physical slaves. Poor people.” - N.M. Karamzin
"It's easier to rule a drunken people." - CATHERINE II, who opened many taverns, - to the question of Princess Dashkova: “Your Majesty, why are you making the Russian people drunk?”
Russians are a terrible nation. They do three things better than anyone in the world: drink, fight and assign beautiful phrases about yourself to foreign politicians. - Benito Mussolini
“Russian people are distinguished by their tendency to spend last resort for all sorts of tricks when the most pressing needs are not satisfied.”
“The Russian man is a big pig. If you ask why he doesn’t eat meat and fish, he makes excuses by the lack of supplies, means of communication, etc., while vodka is available even in the most remote villages and in any quantity.”
“Russian people strive to crack the ham precisely when trichinae are sitting in it, and to cross the river when the ice is cracking on it.”
“Nature has invested in the Russian man extraordinary ability faith, a testing mind and the gift of thinking, but all this is broken into dust by carelessness, laziness and dreamy frivolity..."
“Russian people love to remember, but do not like to live.”
“Russian people lack the desire to desire.”
- A.P. Chekhov
The only hope for a Russian is to win two hundred thousand . - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov. Notebooks. Diaries
“The whole of Russia is a country of some greedy and lazy people: they eat and drink an awful lot, like to sleep during the day and snore in their sleep. They marry for order in the house, and take mistresses for prestige in society. Their psychology is that of a dog: if they beat them, they yelp quietly and hide in their kennels; if they caress them, they lie on their backs, paws up, and wag their tails...” - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov in conversation with Maxim Gorky
“And the Russian peasant, taking up an ax, defended his slavery with desperate frenzy.” - F. Engels
“Love for the fatherland has turned into sugary boasting. Proof of this is our so-called leavened patriots“After their inappropriate praise, I just want to spit on Russia.”
“Are we better than other nations? Are you closer to Christ in life than they are? We are no better than anyone, and life is still much more unsettled and disordered than all of them. “We are worse than everyone else” - that’s what we should always say about ourselves.”
"In our national character servility and servility, obscenity and bloodthirstiness, fanaticism and drunkenness prevail.” - Metropolitan Hilarion
"National self-consciousness - national complacency - national self-adoration - national self-destruction."
“Russians are not even capable of having intelligence and conscience, but have always had one meanness.” - V. Soloviev
“I’m reading Solovyov. Continuous sedition, claims to power by boyars and still unfinished appanage princes, deceptive “kissing of the cross”, insatiable ambition, feigned repentance (“they beat you with their forehead, your slave” and again deception, mutual reproaches, attacks on each other, continuous burning of cities, devastation them, “devastation to the ground” - the eternal words of Russian history! - and fires, fires... And how tired the whole world is of this vile, greedy, absurd bastard Rus' with its abominations and misfortunes! - Ivan Bunin,from diaries
"The Russian man knows how to be a saint, but he cannot be honest." - Konstantin Leontiev, Russian philosopher (1831 - 1891)
“They are the dirtiest of Allah’s creations - they are not cleansed from excrement or urine, they do not wash themselves from sexual impurity and they do not wash their hands after eating, but they are like wandering donkeys.”-- Ibn Fadlan
“These people are by nature prone to deception; only strong beatings can curb them. I heard one Russian say that it is much more fun to live in prison than in freedom, if only there were no severe beatings. In prison they receive food and drink without work, as well as alms from people who are kind to them. When they are free, they receive nothing. The number of poor people here is very large, and they live in the most miserable way: I saw them eating salted herring and other stinking fish. You cannot find a more stinking and rotten fish, but they eat it with pleasure, praising that it is healthier than any other fish or fresh food.” - Richard Chancellor, English traveler, 1553
“This people has more inclinations towards slavery than towards freedom. I have heard servants complain that their masters do not beat them enough. Muscovites are considered more cunning and deceitful than everyone else... If they begin to swear and swear, know that there is deception hidden here, for they swear with the aim of deceiving...” - Councilor-Chamberlain and Head of the Austrian State Treasury Sigismund Baron Herberstein-Neiperg-Hüttentag, “Notes on Muscovite Affairs”, 1549.
“The entire Moscow nation is in the worst slavery. Each and every one, without distinction of class, together with ministers, are slaves. High nobles sign their letters to the tsar “your slave and servant Ivashka or Petrushka,” etc. If anyone had signed Ivan or Peter, he would have lost his life. The Muscovites are convinced that their entire country, with all its wealth and all its people, is the private property of the king, and he has the divine right to do whatever he wants with the estates and people. Muscovites do not have simple moral principles. They don’t want to learn even decent behavior from strangers, considering their own to be the best. This nation, born and brought up in slavery, is furious whenever the despotism of the king is weakened even a little. Muscovites are submissive only if they are bridled and yoked... The upper classes, although they themselves are slaves, treat the lower classes as slaves. Lacking the simplest culture, Muscovites consider deception to be the greatest wisdom. When it comes to lies, they know neither boundaries nor the slightest shame. Ordinary human virtues are so alien, incomprehensible to Muscovites, that they consider meanness to be a high virtue... These people hate freedom and protest if it is thrown at them. If any king reigned like the kings in Europe, that is, he would lead state affairs without interfering with private and social life their citizens, then the Muscovites would not obey this and would probably kill them... Moscow soldiers, of their own free will, without orders, love to cruelly mock and torture prisoners. In Muscovy, you can always and everywhere, for little money, find false witnesses who will swear on the cross and the Gospel in the church. Even the Turks do not have such disgusting servility towards the higher and such cruel mockery of the lower, defenseless” - Sigismund Baron Herberstein-Neiperg-Güttentag, ibid.
“...They are very inclined towards evil, they easily lie and steal” — Raphael Barberini, "Journey to Muscovy", 1565
"Merchants and all business people Muscovy lie all the time, and are very easily deceived; they cannot be trusted with any money - they can be misappropriated. It is impossible to trust the Russians in debt; any goods left unattended will certainly be stolen.” - Heinrich Staden, “About Ivan the Terrible’s Moscow. Notes of a German guardsman" (1578)
“Moreover, they are cunning, crafty, stubborn, intemperate, resistant and vile, depraved, not to mention shameless, prone to all kinds of evil, using violence instead of reasoning...” — Ulfeld Y. Journey to Russia of the Danish envoy Jacob Ulfeld in the 16th century. M., 1889
“Russians are cunning, crafty, stubborn, intemperate, resistant and vile, prone to all kinds of evil, using violence instead of reasoning...” - “Journey to Muscovy of the Danish envoy Jacob Ulfeld in the 16th century.”
“In Rus' before Rurik there were, of course, people, but people without a state; they lived like forest animals, did not stand out in any way, without any communication with the world and therefore were not noted or described by any of the cultured Europeans... Wild, rude, scattered Slavs began to become public people only through the mediation of the Germans, who were destined to scatter the first seeds of civilization in the northwestern and northeastern worlds.” - August Ludwig Schlözer, German historian (1735 - 1809)
“But seeing that this people are completely barbaric and uneducated, and therefore are not able to learn 24 Greek letters, Cyril and Methodius invented and inscribed 35 letters for them.” - Banduri don Anselm, historian (1671 - 1743)
“A people who have not declared themselves in any way, disrespectful, considered on a par with slaves, unnamed, but gained fame since the campaign against us, insignificant, but now gained importance, humble and poor, barbaric, nomadic, proud of their weapons, without guards, a blameless people." - Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople (820 - 896)
“The Eastern Slavs lived in tribal communities; their farming was dominated by a primitive method, which was fully consistent with the conditions of their existence. U Eastern Slavs there was nothing that resembled even the most rudimentary form of statehood... The Mongol-Tatars were culturally superior to the Russians in almost all respects.” - Richard Pipes, American historian
