russia

Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty.

I'll pretend, I tell myself. Pretending is safer than believing.

The old disease, thought Rubashov. Revolutionaries should not think through other people's minds. Or, perhaps they should? Or even ought to? How can one change the world if one identifies oneself with everybody? How else can one change it? He who understands and forgives -- where would he find a motive to act? Where would he not?

Stalin__ Russia was a trap, in which even those running the system were caught. The leaders were trapped by fear of Stalin and even he was trapped by his fear of their desire to be rid of him. Everything he had to eat or drink had to be tasted by one of his colleagues first. Beria__ behavior at his death showed that his fear was only partly paranoia.

I asked of the limitless sunshineHow to shine with the dawn's glowing light;No answer came back from the sunshine, But my soul heard a whisper, "Burn bright!

Then a beat-up car lurched into sight towing an even more beat-up car. As the cars came near, I saw that they were connected back to front by a loop made of two seat belts buckled to each other. That was the only time I ever saw a Russian use a seat belt for any purpose at all.

But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke. By morning there was a mass of booming, fiery tongues, a hissing, crashing, howling all around, half the sky black with smoke, and the bloodied sun just barely visible. And what can little men do with their spades, ditches, and pails? The forest is no more, it was devoured by fire: stumps and ash. Perhaps illimitable fields will be plowed here one day, perhaps some new, unheard-of wheat will ripen here and men from Arkansas with shaven faces will weigh in their palms the heavy golden grain. Or perhaps a city will grow up-alive with ringing sound and motion, all stone and crystal and iron-and winged men will come here flying over seas and mountains from all ends of the world. But never again the forest, never again the blue winter silence and the golden silence of summer. And only the tellers of tales will speak in many-colored patterned words about what had been, about wolves and bears and stately green-coated century-old grandfathers, about old Russia; they will speak about all this to us who have seen it with our own eyes ten years - a hundred years! - ago, and to those others, the winged ones, who will come in a hundred years to listen and to marvel at it all as at a fairy tale. ("In Old Russia")

Russia has gone way beyond its legal powers to use bases in the Crimea.

Russia has every reason to dispose of its nuclear arsenal... to suit its interests and international legal obligations.

Legal reform in Russia is a must. And I keep track of it daily.

Ex-Presidents of the United States get state subsidies. Not so in Russia. You get no government support.

Our military might is the guarantor of Russia's security and independence.

Space is not an enterprise that belongs to the U.S. or to Russia or to China - it is a human endeavor and experience. And that's as it should be.

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

This marriage had resulted from impulse: he had seen her on a high-flying swing at Tsarkoe Selo and her skirt, flared by the breeze, had exposed her ankles; he had proposed the following day.

Okay, so we know that someone at your place of work hacked into this laptop. That's what we know, that's all we know; let's not jump to conclusions...yet." "Unless...it's backward...

The New START accord cuts the strategic nuclear arsenals on each side to 1,550 warheads. Can any of its critics make a case that our security would be imperiled if, the very next day, Obama and Medvedev made moves to take the levels down to 1,000__hen to 500?If so, come show us the math. If not, it may be time to stop making arms control so politically complicated__ime to stop letting arms control get in the way of disarmament.

Unlike Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, the United States was created by an enlightened band of Founding Fathers with a global vision for the new republic.