Barnes Carr > Quotes

“After the Russian Civil War, Soviet intelligence and counterintelligence officers would pride themselves on being nondescript. They wore suits and ties. They shaved. They got haircuts. They were no more tough-looking than anybody else you saw on the street. Under Dzerzhinsky, though, a menacing appearance was de rigueur for a headhunter. That included a heavy beard stubble. All Bolsheviks who weren’t at a top level were supposed to look shoddy, DeWitt Poole later wrote.”
― Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot: The Untold Story of America's Midnight War Against Russia

“Boris hung out at cafés and race tracks. He enjoyed strolling down the Champs Élysées wearing kid gloves, yellow spats, and straw boater, with cane in hand and his trademark white gardenia in his boutonnière. Chez Duval was his favorite restaurant, Closerie des Lilas his most loved bar. He met spies and revolutionaries at La Rotonde and entertained them with stories of his salad days when he was blowing away tsarist bureaucrats with the regularity of a mail train.”
― Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot: The Untold Story of America's Midnight War Against Russia

“The story includes plots, counterplots, secret missions, money laundering, a high-level sting operation, invasions, naval duels, hard-fought battles in the Russian snow, mutinies, murders, victories, and defeats. The characters include patriots, traitors, special agents, double agents, triple agents, executive agents, agents of influence, agents provocateurs, and at least one femme fatale.”
― Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot: The Untold Story of America's Midnight War Against Russia

“Prosecutor Soloviev in 2010 said Kaplan and Viktor Garsky were planning to assassinate Vladimir Alexandrovich Sukhomlinov, the local governor general. Sukhomlinov would later serve as minister of war, 1909–1915, but was sacked for failing to keep the Russian army sufficiently supplied with weapons. The provisional government convicted him of corruption and treason, and sentenced him to life in prison. The Bolsheviks freed him and he fled to Germany. Sukhomlinov dressed in heavily ornate uniforms with medals, plumes, ribbons, and gold braid. The “Sukhomlinov Effect” is named after him. It contends that armies with the most pretentious uniforms lose wars.”
― Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot: The Untold Story of America's Midnight War Against Russia

“He strikes me as a man who would willingly die fighting for Russia provided there was a big enough audience to see him do it.”
― Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot: The Untold Story of America's Midnight War Against Russia

“Charles Adolphe Faux-Pas Bidet.”
― Barnes Carr, The Lenin Plot: The Untold Story of America's Midnight War Against Russia