Slavic Peoples Quotes

“Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have become both more accurate and more honest—fractionally more brave, one might say—about that 'other' cleansing of the regions and peoples that were ground to atoms between the upper and nether millstones of Hitlerism and Stalinism. One of the most objective chroniclers is Professor Timothy Snyder of Yale University. In his view, it is still 'Operation Reinhardt,' or the planned destruction of Polish Jewry, that is to be considered as the centerpiece of what we commonly call the Holocaust, in which of the estimated 5.7 million Jewish dead, 'roughly three million were prewar Polish citizens.' We should not at all allow ourselves to forget the millions of non-Jewish citizens of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and other Slav territories who were also massacred. But for me the salient fact remains that anti-Semitism was the regnant, essential, organizing principle of all the other National Socialist race theories. It is thus not to be thought of as just one prejudice among many.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“She decided that day to study Russian, the language of violence, terror, and absurdity. She knew she would never be bored.”
― Natalie Standiford, The Boy on the Bridge

“Once, long ago, there was a world in which we called different languages "ours".”
― Semezdin Mehmedinović, My Heart

“Our town was christened Buyan, after the legend of a Slavic island that appeared, and disappeared, at will. That would later seem an eerie, and disconcerting, premonition.”
― A.B. Shepherd, Lifeboat

“According to the science writer Philip Ball, when it was pointed out to musicologist Deryck Cooke
that Slavic and much Spanish music use minor keys for happy music, he claimed that their lives
were so hard that they didn’t really know what happiness was anyway.”
― David Byrne

“Whenever I'm in the company of strangers and speak in a way that reveals my Slav accent, the question follows: "Where are you from?" I always reply politely. It's very important to me that I say exactly where I'm from, and explain where that place is in case the person I'm talking to has never hears of my country ("in Europe, near Italy"). I suppose that's the need in me to feel accepted for what I am.”
― Semezdin Mehmedinović, My Heart

“In the rush Ćebo didn't pour it exactly in the mouth, but rather splashed it on his face. In that instant a wisp of some sort of fog escaped from the vampire's mouth, a true butterfly, and flew off somewhere.”
― Milovan Glišić, After Ninety Years: The Story of Serbian Vampire Sava Savanović

“belief systems are not chosen
by statesmen on the basis of the quality of church frescos; and alphabets
are created by proselytizers, not at the initiative of those who are prose
lytized.”
― Serhii Plokhy, The Origins of the Slavic Nations: Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus