Russian Soul Quotes

“Every morning I called Aeroflot to ask about my suitcase. "Oh, it's you," sighed the clerk. "Yes, I have your request right here. Address: Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's house. When we find the suitcase we will send it to you. In the meantime, are you familiar with our Russian phrase *resignation of the soul*?”
― Elif Batuman, The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them

“To love someone means to see them as God intended them”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский

“At last it dawned on me that the differences between us were not really simply because he was Russian and I American. Sure, we were having trouble with cultural differences. But it was our versions of evil that really differed--evil in relation to God and man, not evil in relation to sociology or socialism. Russians and Americans couldn't have been more diametrically opposed in relation to hope and the future. And the Bolshevik Revolution hadn't that much to do with it. But it was just too easy to say the Russian soul was imprinted with the need to suffer. Nor was it true that the American soul was imprinted with an adolescent naïveté causing enthusiasm and optimism to spring eternal.”
― Shirley MacLaine, Dancing in the Light

“Then there were times when Vassy compulsively yet touchingly would get very drunk and break down in great heaving sobs when we got home. No one could possibly understand what it meant to be a 'fucking Russian in America,' he sobbed. 'My fucking country, my beloved Russia,' he would cry. 'No one understands my country. You judge us, you condemn us, you believe we have swords in our teeth. You're so conditioned, so brainwashed, even more than we are. At least Russians know about America, not only bad things. And you here imagine Russia as a concentration camp! You don't like Commies! That's your problem. Now I hear Americans think 'Russian' is the same as evil, stupidity, idleness. That's dangerous! What about our culture, our music, our ingenuity, our patience, endurance--these are qualities, not drawbacks! Yes, we are fucking different, why not? Why should we be the same? Instead of trying to change each other, why don't we simply tolerate our differences and enjoy similarities?”
― Shirley MacLaine, Dancing in the Light

“Es gibt wenige Orte, wo sich so viele trübe, starke, seltsame Momente, die auf die menschliche Seele wirken, vereinigt finden, wie in Petersburg.”
― Dostojewski, Fjodor

“I am stubborn," he had said once, 'or how you call "obstinate," then you must hit me. Hit me hard. Russians need to be hit. We only understand to be hit. We need a big fist, I can tell you.”
― Shirley MacLaine, Dancing in the Light

“I read many books on Russian artists, writers, philosophers, and musicians in an attempt to understand [Vassy, her partner]. I seemed to be concluding that the Russian himself was saying 'We are not to be understood.' It was maddeningly challenging to me. I didn't like not understanding...at least to my satisfaction. Half savage, half saint. That seemed to be the consensus of opinion among the Russians themselves. The communist government appeared to be irrelevant, merely a continuation in a different form of a system which basically denied the importance of the individual. Vassy had told me in the beginning that the Russian people had the government they needed and understood, and in many respects he even claimed they would want Joe Stalin back because he would, in effect, protect them from themselves.”
― Shirley MacLaine, Dancing in the Light

“Ah, the Russians…
While I was still living in Prague, the following anecdote went round about the Russian soul: a Czech man seduces a Russian woman with devastating speed. After intercourse, the Russian woman says to him with boundless contempt: 'You had my body. But you'll never have my soul!'
A splendid anecdote.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“When the NKVD came in the middle of the night to arrest her husband, who had spent Sunday with her in Kazan, she carried on in a manner worthy of a Greek tragedy. Needless to say, she was heartbroken for her beloved husband, the father of her child, but she suppressed her feelings. “So he lied to me,” she exclaimed dramatically. “So he really was against the Party all the time!” With an amused grin, the men from the NKVD said: “Better get his things together.” But she refused to do this for an enemy of the Party, and when her husband went to his sleeping child’s cot to kiss him good-by, she barred his way: “My child has no father!” Then, shaking the policemen fervently by the hand, she swore to them that her son would be brought up a loyal servant of the Party.”
― Eugenia Ginzburg, Journey into the Whirlwind